The difference between saints, forget-me-nots, and mountains, have to, have to, have to at a time.
— Gertrude Stein
War is never fatal but always lost. Always lost.
The earth is the earth as a peasant sees it, the world is the world as a duchess sees it, and anyway a duchess would be nothing if the earth was not there as the peasant sees it.
I don't envisage collectivism. There is no such animal, it is always individualism, sometimes the rest vote and sometimes they do not, and if they do they do and if they do not they do not.
What is marriage, is marriage protection or religion, is marriage renunciation or abundance, is marriage a stepping-stone or an end. What is marriage.
I have declared that patience is never more than patient. I too have declared, that I who am not patient am patient.
But the problem is that when I go around and speak on campuses, I still don't get young men standing up and saying, 'How can I combine career and family?'
There is no such thing as being good to your wife.
Human beings are interested in two things. They are interested in the reality and interested in telling about it.
Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.
It is very easy to love alone.
Name any name and then remember everybody you ever knew who bore that name. Are they all alike. I think so.
Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.
Disillusionment in living is finding that no one can really ever be agreeing with you completely in anything.
Is it worse to be scared than to be bored, that is the question.
Do you know because I tell you so, or do you know, do you know.
Do not forget birthdays. This is in no way a propaganda for a larger population.
In a war everybody always knows all about Switzerland, in peace times it is just Switzerland but in war time it is the only country that everybody has confidence in, everybody.
Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen.
Very likely education does not make very much difference.
Just as everybody has the vote including women, I think children should, because as a child is conscious of itself then it has to me an existence and has a stake in what happens.
Nature is commonplace. Imitation is more interesting.
Everybody thinks that this civilization has lasted a very long time but it really does take very few grandfathers' granddaughters to take us back to the dark ages.
Sculpture is made with two instruments and some supports and pretty air.
It is not what France gave you but what it did not take from you that was important.
In France one must adapt oneself to the fragrance of a urinal.
History takes time. History makes memory.
Remarks are not literature.
I rarely believe anything, because at the time of believing I am not really there to believe.
Before the flowers of friendship faded friendship faded.
Once more I can climb about and remind you that a woman in this epoch does the important literary thinking.
Men cannot count, they do not know that two and two make four if women do not tell them so.
Oh, I wish I were a miser; being a miser must be so occupying.
Every adolescent has that dream every century has that dream every revolutionary has that dream, to destroy the family.
I know what Germans are. They are a funny people. They are always choosing someone to lead them in a direction which they do not want to go.
A house in the country is not the same as a country house.
You'll be old and you never lived, and you kind of feel silly to lie down and die and to never have lived, to have been a job chaser and never have lived.
That is what war is and dancing it is forward and back, when one is out walking one wants not to go back the way they came but in dancing and in war it is forward and back.
The nineteenth century was completely lacking in logic, it had cosmic terms and hopes, and aspirations, and discoveries, and ideals but it had no logic.
I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed.
A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself.
Just before she died she asked, What is the answer? No answer came. She laughed and said, In that case, what is the question? Then she died.
Action and reaction are equal and opposite.
There is no there there.
Romance is everything.
One of the pleasant things those of us who write or paint do is to have the daily miracle. It does come.
There is too much fathering going on just now and there is no doubt about it fathers are depressing.
It is so friendly so simply friendly and though inevitable not a sadness and though occurring not a shock.
Supposing everyone lived at one time what would they say. They would observe that stringing string beans is universal.
Counting is the religion of this generation it is its hope and its salvation.
