Gertrude Atherton Quotes - Page 3

the curse of human nature is imagination. When a long anticipated moment comes, we always find it pitched a note too low, for the wings of imagination are crushed into its withering sides under the crowding hordes of petty realities.

genius must ever be imperfect. Life is not long enough nor slow enough for both brain and character to grow side by side to superhuman proportions.

her age was that indeterminate mixture of everlasting youth and anticipated wisdom which is the glory and the curse of genius.

The French are a race of individuals. There is no type.

stoicism is the fundamental characteristic of the French.

fiction is not only the historian of life but its apologist.

Fame compensates for a column of wants.

... the irony of life is not that you cannot forget but that you can.

The world, and the great and free United States in particular, is full of narrow-minded, ignorant, moronic, bigoted, cowardly, self-righteous, anemic, pig-headed, stupid, puritanical, hypocritical, prejudiced, fanatical, cocoa-blooded atavists, who soothe their inferiority complex by barking their hatred of anything new.

It took me some time to learn that although every one secretly cherishes the ambition to be 'put in a book,' no one is ever satisfied with anything save incense, butter, and honey, unrelieved by salt or spice.

Whether you fail or set the world on fire cannot make so very much difference if only you have the opportunity to try for it, to work for it, to think of nothing else!

Oh, what is young love! The urge of the race. A blaze that ends in babies or ashes.

Nursing is not only a natural vocation for a woman, but an occupation which increases her matrimonial chances about eighty per cent.

... France is the genius among nations.

Every leader of a great revolution is a fanatic and a Jesuit.

[Alexander] Hamilton estimated portrait painters as thieves of time.

In times of panic man seems to exchange his soul for a tail.

No matter how hard a man may labor, some woman is always in the background of his mind. She is the one reward of virtue.

I have come to the conclusion that the modern interpretation of the Declaration of Independence is something like this: I am as good as those that think themselves better and a long sight better than those who only think themselves as good.

... books are too heterogeneous an interest to furnish a vital one in life, a reason for being alive.

It is a pretty trick of authors to make nature ever in sympathy with man, but as a matter of fact she seldom is.

I see no present solution of a great and intricate problem but that the rich should realize their duty to the poor.