John Galsworthy Quotes - Page 2

Early morning does not mince words.

Society is built on marriage ... marriage and its consequences.

Summer — summer — summer! The soundless footsteps on the grass!

Matters change and morals change; men remain.

Essential 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.

Once admit that we have the right to inflict unnecessary suffering and you destroy the very basis of human society.

Men are in fact, quite unable to control their own inventions; they at best develop adaptability to the new conditions those inventions create.

Beauty 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.

the biggest tragedy of life is the utter impossibility to change what you have done

Humanism 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.

I am still under the impression that there is nothing alive quite so beautiful as a thoroughbred horse.

Love! Beyond measure — beyond death — it nearly kills. But one wouldn't have been without it.

As a man lives and thinks, so he will write.

The 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.

Slang is vigorous and apt. Probably most of our vital words were once slang.

The law is what it is-a majestic edifice, sheltering all of us, each stone of which rests on another.

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.

Come! Let us lay a lance in rest, And tilt at windmills under a wild sky! For who would live so petty and unblest That dare not tilt at something ere he die; Rather than, screened by safe majority, Preserve his little life to little end, And never raise a rebel cry!

Love of beauty is really only the sex instinct, which nothing but complete union satisfies.

He 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.

Dawn has power to fertilise the most matter-of-fact vision.

Justice is a machine that, when some one has once given it the starting push, rolls on of itself.

When a Forsyte was engaged, married, or born, the Forsytes were present; when a Forsyte diedbut no Forsyte had as yet died; they did not die; death being contrary to their principles, they took precautions against it, the instinctive precautions of highly vitalised persons who resent encroachments on their property.

It`s always worth while before you do anything to consider whether it`s going to hurt another person more than is absolutely necessary.

Art is the one form of human energy in the whole world, which really works for union, and destroys the barriers between man and man. It is the continual, unconscious replacement, however fleeting, of oneself by another; the real cement of human life; the everlasting refreshment and renewal. For, what is grievous, dompting, grim, about our lives is that we are shut up within ourselves, with an itch to get outside ourselves. And to be stolen away from ourselves by Art is a momentary relaxation from that itching, a minute's profound, and as it were secret, enfranchisement.