I always get back to the question, is it really necessary that men should consume so much of their bodily and mental energies in t...he machinery of civilised life? The world seems to me to do much of its toil for that which is not in any sense bread. Again, does not the latent feeling that much of their striving is to no purpose tend to infuse large quantities of sham into men's work?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... it is only after years and years that you can speak of penury in the midst of opulence, of hunger in the midst of almost sinfu...l plenty. You must never speak of the immediate experience unless and until you have learned its consequent value. Otherwise you grow old in bitterness which is barren and futile....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am willing, for a money consideration, to test this physical strength, this nervous force, and muscular power with which I've be...en gifted, to show that they will bear a certain strain. If I break down, if my brain gives way under want of sleep, my heart ceases to respond to the calls made on my circulatory system, or the surcharged veins of my extremities burst--if, in short, I fall helpless, or it may be, dead on the track, then I lose my money.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use th...eir best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it, making it horrible for the ol...der people and the kids? A man cannot know himself better than by attending to the feelings of his heart and to his external actions, from which he may with tolerable certainty judge "what manner of person he is." I have therefore determined to keep a daily journal.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This, my first [bicycle] had an intrinsic beauty. And it opened for me an era of all but flying, which roads emptily crossing the ...airy, gold-gorsy Common enhanced. Nothing since has equalled that birdlike freedom.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to ring true. True to wha...t? True to life as the reader knows life to be or, it may be, feels life to be. And I mean the adult, the grown-up reader. Such a reader has outgrown fairy tales, and we do not want the fantastic and the impossible. So I say to you that a novel must stand up to the adult tests of reality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
At the age of twelve I was finding the world too small: it appeared to me like a dull, trim back garden, in which only trivial gam...es could be played.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A novel which survives, which withstands and outlives time, does do something more than merely survive. It does not stand still. I...t accumulates round itself the understanding of all these persons who bring to it something of their own. It acquires associations, it becomes a form of experience in itself, so that two people who meet can often make friends, find an approach to each other, because of this one great common experience they have had ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... a novel survives because of its basic truthfulness, its having within it something general and universal, and a quality of ima...ginative perception which applies just as much now as it did in the fifty or hundred or two hundred years since the novel came to life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »