John Galsworthy Quotes - Page 3

There are houses whose souls have passed into the limbo of Time, leaving their bodies in the limbo of London. Such was not quite the condition of Timothy's on the Bayswater Road, for Timothy's soul still had one foot in Timothy Forsyte's body, and Smither kept the atmosphere unchanging, of camphor and port wine and house whose windows are only opened to air it twice a day.

There are moments when Nature reveals the passion hidden beneath the careless calm of her ordinary moods-violent spring flashing white on almond-blossom through the purple clouds; a snowy, moonlit peak, with its single star, soaring up to the passionate blue; or against the flames of sunset, an old yew-tree standing dark guardian of some fiery secret.

It isnot good enough tospend time and ink indescribing the penultimate sensations and physical movements of people getting into a state of rut, we all know them so well.

We are all familiar with the argument: Make war dreadful enough, and there will be no war. And we none of us believe it.

The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy.

It is an age of stir and change, a season of new wine and old bottles. Yet, assuredly, in spite of breakages and waste, a wine worth the drinking is all the time being made.

There is one rule for politicians all over the world: Don't say in Power what you say in opposition; if you do, you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.

It is by muteness that a dog becomes for one so utterly beyond value; with him one is at peace, where words play no torturing tricks.Those are the moments that I think are precious to a dog-when, with his adoring soul coming through his eyes, he feels that you are really thinking of him.

The young man who, at the end of September, 1924, dismounted from a taxicab in South Square, Westminster, was so unobtrusively American that his driver had some hesitation in asking for double his fare. The young man had no hesitation in refusing it.

Only love makes fruitful the soul. The sense of form that both had in such high degree prevented much demonstration; but to be with him, do things for him, to admire, and credit him with perfection; and, since she could not exactly wear the same clothes or speak in the same clipped, quiet, decisive voice, to dislike the clothes and voices of other men - all this was precious to her beyond everything.

Religion was nearly dead because there was no longer real belief in future life; but something was struggling to take its place - service - social service - the ants creed, the bees creed.

By the cigars they smoke, and the composers they love, ye shall know the texture of men's souls.

Light-heartedness always made Soames suspicious - there was generally some reason for it.

See what perils do environ those who meddle with hot iron.

The talked-about is always the last to hear the talk . . .

Only out of stir and change is born new salvation. To deny that is to deny belief in man, to turn our backs on courage!

When Man evolved Pity, he did a queer thing - deprived himself of the power of living life as it is without wishing it to become something different.

The Forsytes were resentful of something, not individually, but as a family; this resentment expressed itself in an added perfection of raiment, an exuberance of family cordiality, an exaggeration of family importance, and the sniff. Danger so indispensable in bringing out the fundamental quality of any society, group, or individual was what the Forsytes scented; the premonition of danger put a burnish on their armour. For the first time, as a family, they appeared to have an instinct of being in contact, with some strange and unsafe thing.

Looking back on the long-stretched-out body of one's work, it is interesting to mark the endless duel fought within a man between the emotional and critical sides of his nature, first one, then the other, getting the upper hand, and too seldom fusing till the result has the mellowness of full achievement. One can even tell the nature of one's readers, by their preference for the work which reveals more of this side than of that.

He might wish and wish and never get it - the beauty and the loving in the world!

From behind a wooden crate we saw a long black-muzzled nose poking round at us. We took him out-soft, wobbly, tearful; set him down on his four, as yet not quite simultaneous legs, and regarded him. He wandered a little round our legs, neither wagging his tail nor licking at our hands; then he looked up, and my companion said: "He's an angel!"

Take modern courtships! They resulted in the same thing as under George the Second, but took longer to reach it, owing to the motor-cycle and the standing lunch.

Memory heaps dead leaves on corpse-like deeds, from under which they do but vaguely offend the sense.