T. H. White Quotes

Might does not make right! Right makes right!

The bravest people are the ones who don’t mind looking like cowards.

It is good to put your life in other people's hands.

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails.

Jenny, all my life I have wanted to do miracles. I have wanted to be holy. I suppose it was ambition or pride or some other unworthy thing. It was not enough for me to conquer the world--I wanted to conquer heaven too.

It is so fatally easy to make young children believe that they are horrible.

War is like a fire. One man may start it, but it will spread all over. It is not about any one thing in particular.

If it takes a million years for a fish to become a reptile, has Man, in our few hundred, altered out of recognition?

Wars are never fought for one reason," he said. "They are fought for dozens of reasons, in a muddle.

All forms of collectivism are mistaken, according to the human skull.

I am an anarchist, like any other sensible person. ~ Merlyn

There is one fairly good reason for fighting - and that is, if the other man starts it. You see, wars are a great wickedness, perhaps the greatest wickedness of a wicked species. They are so wicked that they must not be allowed. When you can be perfectly certain that the other man started them, then is the time when you might have a sort of duty to stop them.

They had a year of joy, twelve months of the strange heaven which the salmon know on beds of river shingle, under the gin-clear water. For twenty-four years they were guilty, but this first year was the only one which seemed like happiness. Looking back on it, when they were old, they did not remember that in this year it had ever rained or frozen. The four seasons were coloured like the edge of a rose petal for them.

It has to be admitted that starving nations never seem to be quite so starving that they cannot afford to have far more expensive armaments than anybody else.

A chaos of mind and body - a time for weeping at sunsets and at the glamour of moonlight - a confusion and profusion of beliefs and hopes, in God, in Truth, in Love, and in Eternity - an ability to be transported by the beauty of physical objects - a heart to ache or swell- a joy so hoyful and a sorrow so sorrowful that oceans could lie between them.

Why can't you harness Might so that it works for Right? I know it sounds nonsense, but, I mean, you can't just say there is no such thing. The Might is there, in the bad half of people, and you can't neglect it. You can't cut it out but you might be able to direct it, if you see what I mean, so that it was useful instead of bad.

You run a grave risk, my boy," said the magician, "of being turned into a piece of bread, and toasted.

...All endeavours which are directed to a purely worldly end...contain within themselves the germs of their own corruption.

Now, in their love, which was stronger, there were the seeds of hatred and fear and confusion growing at the same time: for love can exist with hatred, each preying on the other, and this is what gives it its greatest fury.

A lot of brainless unicorns swaggering about and calling themselves educated just because they can push each other off a horse with a bit of a stick! It makes me tired.

It is the bad people who need to have principles to restrain them.

But there was a time when each of us stood naked before the world, confronting life as a serious problem with which we were intimately and passionately concerned... There was a time when Free Love versus Catholic Morality was a question of as much importance to our hot bodies as if a pistol had been clapped to our heads. Further back, there were times when we wondered with all our souls what the world was, what love was, what we were ourselves.

[Kay] was not at all an unpleasant person really, but clever, quick, proud, passionate and ambitious. He was one of those people who would be neither a follower nor a leader, but only an aspiring heart, impatient in the failing body which imprisoned it.

Life is too bitter already, without territories and wars and noble feuds

The Victorians had not been anxious to go away for the weekend. The Edwardians, on the contrary, were nomadic.

Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts uncritically--to those who hardly think about us in return.

Aviators live by hours, not by days.

There is a thing called knowledge of the world, which people do not have until they are middle-aged. It is something which cannot be taught to younger people, because it is not logical and does not obey laws which are constant. It has no rules. Only, in the long years which bring women to the middle of life, a sense of balance develops...when she is beginning to hate her used body, she suddenly finds that she can do it. She can go on living.

Nobody can be saved from anything, unless they save themselves. It is hopeless doing things for people - it is often very dangerous to do things at all - and the only thing worth doing for the race is to increase its stock of ideas. Then, if you make available a larger stock, people are at liberty to help themselves from out of it. By this process the means of improvement is offered, to be accepted or rejected freely, and there is a faint hope of progress in the course of millennia. Such is the business of the philosopher, to open new ideas. It is not his business to impose them on people.

The destiny of man is to unite, not to divide.

You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn.

Love is a trick played on us by the forces of evolution. Pleasure is the bait laid down by the same. There is only power. Power is of the individual mind but the mind's power is not enough. Power of the body decides everything in the end and only might is right.

The Destiny of Man is to unite, not to divide. If you keep on dividing you end up as a collection of monkeys throwing nuts at each other out of separate trees.

He did not like the grown-ups who talked down to him, but the ones who went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to leap along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words, and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned. He had the glee of the porpoise then, pouring and leaping through strange seas.

You could not give up a human heart as you could give up drinking. The drink was yours, and you could give it up: but your lover’s soul was not your own: it was not at your disposal; you had a duty towards it.

The nice thing about the queen of Flanders' daughter, had been that she did not laugh at him. A lot of people laughed at you when you went after the Questing Beast - and never caught it - but Piggy never laughed. She seemed to understand at once how interesting it was, and made several sensible suggestions about the way to trap it. Naturally, one did not pretend to be clever or anything, but it was nice not to be laughed at. One was doing one's best.

The word "feral" has a kind of magic potency which allied itself to two other words, "ferocious" and "free." To revert to a feral state!