T. H. White Quotes

War is like a fire. One man may start it, but it will spread all over. It is not about one thing in particular.

He felt in his heart cruelty and cowardice, the things which made him brave and kind.

"You run a grave risk, my boy," said the magician, "of being turned into a piece of bread, and toasted."

If there is one thing I can't stand, it is stupidity. I always say that stupidity is the Sin against the Holy Ghost.

[Kay] was not at all an unpleasant person really, but clever, quick, proud, passionate and ambitious. He was one of those people who would be neither a follower nor a leader, but
only an aspiring heart, impatient in the failing body which imprisoned it.

But there was a time when each of us stood naked before the world, confronting life as a serious problem with which we were intimately and passionately concerned... There was a time when Free Love versus Catholic Morality was a question of as much importance to our hot bodies as if a pistol had been clapped to our heads.

Further back, there were times when we wondered with all our souls, what the world was, what love was, what we were ourselves.

I will tell you something else, King, which may be a surprise for you. It will not happen for hundreds of years, but both of us are to come back.

It is only people who are lacking, or bad, or inferior, who have to be good at things. You have always been full and perfect, so you had nothing to make up for.

I am an anarchist, like any other sensible person.
~ Merlyn

It has to be admitted that starving nations never seem to be quite so starving that they cannot afford to have far more expensive armaments than anybody else.

And do you know another thing, Arthur? Life is too bitter already, without territories and wars and noble feuds.

The best thing for disturbances of the spirit is to learn. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love and lose your moneys to a monster, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the poor mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.

Love is a trick played on us by the forces of evolution. Pleasure is the bait laid down by the same. There is only power. Power is of the individual mind but the mind's power is not enough. Power of the body decides everything in the end and only might is right.

Mordred and Agravaine thought Arthur hypocritical — as all decent men must be, if you assume that decency can’t exist.

I don't think things ought to be done because you are able to do them. I think they should be done because you ought to do them.