Joyce Cary Quotes

To forgive is wisdom, to forget is genius.

The truth is that life is hard and dangerous; that he who seeks his own happiness does not find it; that he who is weak must suffer; that he who demands love will be disappointed; that he who is greedy will not be fed; that he who seeks peace will find strife; that truth is only for the brave; that joy is only for him who does not fear to be alone; that life is only for the one who is not afraid to die.

The most effective teacher will always be biased, for the chief force in teaching is confidence and enthusiasm.

It is the tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn't know - and the less a man knows, the more sure he is that he knows everything.

Reality is a narrow little house which becomes a prison to those who can't get out of it.

To forgive is wisdom, to forget is genius. And easier. Because it's true. It's a new world every heart beat.

The concept, the label, is perpetually hiding from us all the nature of the real.

I look upon life as a gift from God. I did nothing to earn it. Now that the time is coming to give it back, I have no right to complain.

A perfect God is the creation of a conceited man

A novel should be an experience and convey an emotional truth rather than arguments.

When a woman gets the idea of justice, there's no teaching her any sense.

Of all things I find most unbearable is the injustice of one generation to another.

People don't use their eyes. They never see a bird, they see a sparrow. They never see a tree, they see a birch. They see concepts.

Nothing like poetry when you lie awake at night. It keeps the old brain limber. It washes away the mud and sand that keeps on blocking up the bends. Like waves to make the pebbles dance on my old floors. And turn them into rubies and jacinths; or at any rate, good imitations.

Love doesn't grow on trees like apples in Eden - it's something you have to make. And you must use your imagination too.

I write the big scenes first, that is, the scenes that carry the meaning of the book, the emotional experience.

The will is never free - it is always attached to an object, a purpose. It is simply the engine in the car - it can't steer

No one can estimate the power of authority among poor and uneducated people in a world whose problems confuse even the wisest.

For the essential thing about the work of art is that it is work, and very hard work too.

All art is bad, but modern art is the worst.

Politics is like navigation in a sea without charts, and wise men live the lives of pilgrims.

A foul-mouthed oaf, a drunken laborer lying in a drain, a beaten wife with blackened eyes and torn clothes, cannot be made romantic to a child who sees how other children suffer from bad-tempered parents, from drunken fathers to termagant mothers.

The fear of hell, the punishment of sin, how the modern parent revolts from such teaching. Yet I will assert that far from doing us children harm, it was a sure foundation to the world of our confidence, a master girder in our palace of delight.

What I say to an artist is, 'When you can't paint - paint.

A world in everlasting conflict between the new idea and the old allegiances, new arts and new inventions against the old establishment.