John Galsworthy Quotes

In choosing, moreover, for his father an amiable man of fifty-two, who had already lost an only son, and for his mother a woman of thirty-eight, whose first and only child he was, little Jon had done well and wisely. What had saved him from becoming a cross between a lap dog and a little prig, had been his father's adoration of his mother, for even little Jon could see that she was not merely just his mother, and that he played second fiddle to her in his father's heart: What he played in his mother's heart he knew not yet.

This girl is the daughter of the man who once owned Jon’s mother as a negro-slave was owned. You can’t lay that ghost; don’t try to, June! It’s asking us to see Jon joined to the flesh and blood of the man who possessed Jon’s mother against her will.

That “small” emotion, love, grows amazingly when threatened with extinction.

I cannot help thinking that historians, looking back from the far future, will record this age as the Third Renaissance. We who are lost in it, working or looking on, can neither tell what we are doing, nor where standing; but we cannot help observing, that, just as in the Greek Renaissance, worn-out Pagan orthodoxy was penetrated by new philosophy; just as in the Italian Renaissance, Pagan philosophy, reasserting itself, fertilised again an already too inbred Christian creed; so now Orthodoxy fertilised by Science is producing a fresh and fuller conception of life — a love of Perfection, not for hope of reward, not for fear of punishment, but for Perfection's sake. Slowly, under our feet, beneath our consciousness, is forming that new philosophy, and it is in times of new philosophies that Art, itself in essence always a discovery, must flourish. Those whose sacred suns and moons are ever in the past, tell us that our Art is going to the dogs; and it is, indeed, true that we are in confusion! The waters are broken, and every nerve and sinew of the artist is strained to discover his own safety. 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.

Get Up! Go out! Do something! But what - what was worth doing? What had any meaning in it? She saw herself doing - extravagant things; nursing sick women; tending pale babies; making a speech in Parliament; riding a steeplechase; hoeing turnips in knickerbockers - decorative. And she lay perfectly still, bound by the filaments of her self-vision. So long as she saw herself she would do nothing - she knew it - for nothing would be worth doing! And it seemed to her, lying there so still, that not to see herself would be worse than anything. And she felt that to feel this was to acknowledge herself caged for ever.

Ljubav kao njezina — strastvena, koja obožava, koja štiti, koja čezne za potpunim podavanjem i žrtvovanjem same sebe, ali koja potajno traži i punu njegovu ljubav — jer kako bi bez toga mogla ljubiti ponosna žena? — takva ljubav čezne uvijek za potpunijim sjedinjenjem, nego što je moguće u ovom svijetu, gdje se sve mijenja i pokreće.

And yet, in books were comfort and diversion; and they were wanted!

And while they walked Jolyon pondered those words: 'I hope you'll treat him as you treated me.' That would depend on himself. Could he trust himself? Did nature permit a Forsyte not to make a slave of what he adored? Could beauty be confided to him? Or should she not just be a visitor, coming when she would, possessed for moments which passed, to return only at her own choosing? 'We are a breed of spoilers!' thought Jolyon, 'close and greedy; the bloom of life is not safe with us. Let her come to me as she will, when she will, not at all if she will not. Let me be just her stand-by, her perching-place; never her cage!

Some fifteen years ago in London there was an exhibition of the works of a certain sculptor, which contained many sane and admirable pieces. Two young ladies came in one day, and flitted from flower to flower with dissatisfied air, till at last one of them caught sight of a vast seated assemblage of elliptical rhomboids which was wooing the Public under the name of Venus. Before this supreme novelty she halted, if a butterfly can halt. ‘Oh, my dear,’ she said, ‘here she is! Here’s the Venus!’ And putting her head on one side, she added: ‘Isn’t she a pet?’ Such butterflies still exist and halt before the works of novelty for novelty’s sake, because they are told to by some town-crier, who must have novelty at any cost.

FROME. What was the nature of your relations with him? RUTH. We were friends. THE JUDGE. Friends? RUTH. [Simply] Lovers, sir. THE JUDGE. [Sharply] In what sense do you use that word? RUTH. We love each other.

The fascination of [Joseph Conrad’s] writing lies in a singular blending of reality with romance – he paints a world of strange skies and seas, rivers, forests, men, stranger harbours and ships, all, to our tamed understanding, touched a little by the marvelous. Beyond all modern writers he had lived romance; lived it for many years with a full unconscious pulse, the zest of a young man loving adventure, and before ever he thought to become a writer. How many talents among us are spoiled by having no store of experience and feeling, unconsciously amassed, to feed on! How many writers, without cream inside the churn, are turning out butter!

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.

Art, literature, religion, survive by virtue of the few cranks who really believe in such things, and the many Forsytes who make a commercial use of them.

To every man of great age - to Sir Wlater Bentham himself - the idea of suicide has once at least been present in the ante-room of his soul; on the threshold, waiting to enter, held out from the inmost chamber by some chance reality, some vague fear, some painful hope.
The Man of Property, p. 363

THE CHAPLAIN. Extraordinary perverted will-power — some of them. Nothing to be done till it’s broken. THE GOVERNOR. And not much afterwards, I’m afraid. Ground too hard for golf?