Zoë Akins Quotes

The success haters. ... That's what I call them—the people who have never got what they want and turned sour on everybody who has. The world's full of them. ... As soon as you've made good they begin to watch for you to fail. ...

It's all right to tell a wife the brutal truth, but you've got to go sort of easy with your lady-love.

Mine was a love so exquisite that I </br> Rather than watch it wither chose to die: </br> So dress my grave, O friend, with no poor flower </br> Which in your quiet garden blooms an hour!

And I wonder if peace is enough for any man. ...

My cousin Cleofante does not believe in inspiration. She shuns the false energy of all stimulants, even those of criticism and sympathy, when she sets herself to a task. What she does, she does alone—unencouraged, unadvised, unmoved. She has a man’s broad and vital technique, and a man’s ability for thinking straight and far. For years I have watched her work,—coldly, intelligently, solely with the power of her brain,—achieving effects that are in no way miracles, but are matters of technique and deliberation.

Forgetting is the cost </br> Of living cheerfully.

To accuse is so easy that it is infamous to do so where proof is impossible!

T<small>ILLERTON</small>: "To him that hath it shall be given—" She hath ... that's all. That's greatness. P<small>RESCOTT</small>: One sort of greatness, maybe. T<small>ILLERTON</small>: Even the great can have only their own sort of greatness. P<small>RESCOTT</small>: And it's often only that they're great sponges. T<small>ILLERTON</small>: Often, yes, or great roses for whose blooming the trees have been pruned and stripped. But they make the beauty of the world and that's enough.

My life is like water that has gone over the dam and turned no mill wheels. Here I am, not happy, but not unhappy, as my days run on to the sea, idly—but not too swiftly—for I love living.

Englishmen are like that. They love life more and value it less than any other people in the world.

So much do I love wandering, </br> So much I love the sea and sky, </br> That it will be a piteous thing </br> In one small grave to lie!

The nostalgia— </br> not of memories </br> But of what has never been!

I know not where I go; I scarcely feel </br> The menacing fatigue about my feet, </br> The skies that scourge, the distances that cheat, the constant wounds that never hurt nor heal.

Indifferent to all the fun of chance </br> I watched black spiders of inertia spin </br> The far-flung web which I was strangling in.

The Greeks had a word for it.