118 quotes
All our "most sacred affections" are merely prosaic habit.
This Business of Living (1935)
Generations do not age. Every youth of any period, any civilization, has the same possibilities as always.
This Business of Living (1935)
We must never say, even in fun, that we are disheartened, because someone might take us at our word.
This Business of Living (1935)
There is nothing fine about being a child: it is fine, when we are old, too look back to when we were children.
This Business of Living (1935)
Narrating incredible things as though they were real—old system; narrating realities as though they were incredible—the new.
This Business of Living (1935)
Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.
This Business of Living (1935)
Things are revealed through the memories we have of them. Remembering a thing means seeing it—only then—for the first time.
This Business of Living (1935)
There is no finer revenge than that which others inflict on your enemy. Moreover, it has the advantage of leaving you the role of a generous man.
This Business of Living (1935)
The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies. The fearful thing about it is that, not knowing what truth may be, we can still recognize lies.
This Business of Living (1935)
Love has the faculty of making two lovers seem naked, not in each other's sight, but in their own.
This Business of Living (1935)
We care so little of other people than even Christianity urges us to do good for the love of God.
This Business of Living (1935)
The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.
This Business of Living (1935)
Human imagination is immensely poorer than reality.
This Business of Living (1935)
It wasn't a country where a man could settle down and rest his head and say to the others, "Here I am for good or ill. For good or ill let me leave in peace." This was what was frightening.
The Moon and the Bonfire (1950)
People who don't know any better will always be in the dark because the power lies in the hands of men who take good care that ordinary folk don't understand, in the hands, that is, of the government, of the clerical party, of the capitalists.
The Moon and the Bonfire (1950)
Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.
This Business of Living (1935)
There is only one pleasure—that of being alive. All the rest is misery.
This Business of Living (1935)
Suicides are timid murderers. Masochism instead of Sadism.
This Business of Living (1935)
The most banal thing, discovered in ourselves, becomes intensely interesting. It is no longer an abstract banality, but an amazing co-ordination between reality and our own individuality.
This Business of Living (1935)
Don't you know that what happens to you once always happens again? You always react in the same way to the same thing. It's no accident when you make a mess. Then you do it again. It's called destiny.
The Devil in the Hills (1949)