Phyllis Bottome Quotes

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.

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

... 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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

No emergency excuses you from exercising tolerance.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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