John Galsworthy Quotes

This world (as all will admit) is one of the innumerable expressions of an Unknowable Creative Purpose, which colloquially we call God; that which not every one will admit is that this Creative Purpose works in its fashioning, not only of matter but of what we call spirit, through friction, through the rubbing together of the thoughts and the hearts of men. While the material condition of our planet, the heat or friction within it, remains favorable to human life, there will be, there must needs be, a continual crescendo in the stature of humanity, through the ever increasing friction of human spirits one with the other; friction supplied by life itself, and next after life, by those transcripts of life, those expressions of human longing, which we know as art.

Only those strong enough to keep silent about self are strong enough to be sure of self.

Isn’t this a nice clean place? Loo! What d’you like best in all the world?”
The answer came almost inaudibly from the white puckered lips: “Pictures.”
“That exactly what you’re going to have, every day — twice a day. Think of that. Shut your eyes and have a nice sleep, and when you wake the pictures will begin. Shut your eyes! And I’ll tell you a story. Nothing’s going to happen to you. See! I’m here.”
He thought she had closed her eyes, but pain gripped her suddenly again; she began whimpering and then screamed.
“God!” murmured Hilary. “Another touch, doctor, quick!”
The doctor injected morphia.
“Leave us alone again.”
The doctor slipped away, and the child’s eyes came slowly back to Hilary’s smile. He laid his fingers on her small emaciated hand.
“Now, Loo, listen!
“‘The Walrus and the Carpenter were walking hand in hand,
They wept like anything to see such quantities of sand.
“If seven maids with seven brooms could sweep for half a year, Do you suppose,” the Walrus said, “that they could get it clear?”
“I doubt it,” said the Carpenter, and shed a bitter tear!’”
On and on went Hilary, reciting ‘The Mad Hatter’s Tea-party.’ And, while he murmured, the child’s eyes closed, the small hand lost warmth.
He felt its cold penetrating his own hand and thought: ‘Now, God, if you are — give her pictures!

The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy, the building of a house, the writing of a novel, the demolition of a bridge, and, eminently, the finish of a voyage.

It isn't enough to love people because they're good to you, or because in some way or other you're going to get something by it. We have to love because we love loving.

An epoch which had gilded individual liberty so that if a man had money he was free in law and fact, and if he had not money he was free in law and not in fact. An era which had canonized hypocrisy, so that to seem to be respectable was to be.

Prima ancora del suo primo disastroso matrimonio, si ricordava d’aver seguito con ardore le ribellioni dell’Irlanda, e le cause di divorzio di donne che cercavano di liberarsi da uomini che odiavano. Avevano un bel da dire i parroci che la libertà spirituale e corporale son cose affatto diverse! Perniciosa dottrina, quella! Il corpo e l’anima non si possono separare in tal modo. La libera volontà costituisce la forza di ogni legame, e non la sua debolezza.

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!

SIR CHARLES. [Hastily] You smoke, Mr. MALISE? MALISE. Too much. SIR CHARLES. Ah! Must smoke when you think a lot. MALISE. Or think when you smoke a lot. SIR CHARLES. [Genially] Don't know that I find that. LADY DEDMOND. [With her clear look at him] Charles!

...we're all so interdependent that in order to look after oneself one's got to look after others no less.

"He won't be happy till he gets it," said Michael, at last: "The only thing is, you see, he doesn't know what IT is."

He was a wanderer by nature, and even if England and the nearer East were closed to him, the world was wide, the sun shone in many places, the stars wheeled over one, books could be read, women had beauty, flowers scent, tobacco its flavour, music its moving power, coffee its fragrance, horses and dogs and birds were the same seductive creatures,

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.

Art is that imaginative expression of human energy, which, through technical concretion of feeling and perception, tends to reconcile the individual with the universal, by exciting in him impersonal emotion. And the greatest Art is that which excites the greatest impersonal emotion in an hypothetical perfect human being.

Impersonal emotion! And what - I thought - do I mean by that? Surely I mean: That is not Art, which, while I am contemplating it, inspires me with any active or direct impulse; that is Art, when, for however brief a moment, it replaces within me interest in myself by interest in itself. For, let me suppose myself in the presence of a carved marble bath. If my thoughts be: 'What could I buy that for?' Impulse of acquisition; or: 'From what quarry did it come?' Impulse of inquiry; or: 'Which would be the right end for my head?' Mixed impulse of inquiry and acquisition - I am at that moment insensible to it as a work of Art. But, if I stand before it vibrating at sight of its colour and forms, if ever so little and for ever so short a time, unhaunted by any definite practical thought or impulse - to that extent and for that moment it has stolen me away out of myself and put itself there instead; has linked me to the universal by making me forget the individual in me. And for that moment, and only while that moment lasts, it is to me a work of Art. The word 'impersonal,' then, is but used in this my definition to signify momentary forgetfulness of one's own personality and its active wants.

Vješt je doista draguljar, koji slaže ljudsku dušu i koji joj daje moć, da zaboravlja tamu, a sjeća se samo sunčeva sjaja!