Top 15 John Galsworthy Quotes

Life calls the tune, we dance.

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.

Love is not a hot-house flower, but a wild plant, born of a wet night, born of an hour of sunshine; sprung from wild seed, blown along the road by a wild wind. A wild plant that, when it blooms by chance within the hedge of our gardens, we call a flower; and when it blooms outside we call a weed; but, flower or weed, whose scent and colour are always, wild!

Beauty means this to one person, perhaps, and that to another. And yet when any one of us has seen or heard or read that which to him is beautiful, he has known an emotion which is in every case the same in kind, if not in degree; an emotion precious and uplifting. A choirboy's voice, a ship in sail, an opening flower, a town at night, the song of the blackbird, a lovely poem, leaf shadows, a child's grace, the starry skies, a cathedral, apple trees in spring, a thorough-bred horse, sheep-bells on a hill, a rippling stream, a butterfly, the crescent moon — the thousand sights or sounds or words that evoke in us the thought of beauty — these are the drops of rain that keep the human spirit from death by drought. They are a stealing and a silent refreshment that we perhaps do not think about but which goes on all the time....It would surprise any of us if we realized how much store we unconsciously set by beauty, and how little savour there would be left in life if it were withdrawn. It is the smile on the earth's face, open to all, and needs but the eyes to see, the mood to understand.

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

One's eyes are what one is, one's mouth is what one becomes.

Not the least hard thing to bear when they go from us, these quiet friends, is that they carry away with them so many years of our own lives.

Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.

Love has no age, no limit; and no death.

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

The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy.

Dreaming is the poetry of Life, and we must be forgiven if we indulge in it a little.

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

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

Youth to youth, like the dragon-flies chasing each other, and love like the sun warming them through and through.