45 quotes
Everything free and decent in life is being locked away in filthy little cellars by beastly people who don’t care.
The Collector (1963)
There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist.
The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969)
It must essentially remain a novel of adolescence written by a retarded adolescent.
The Magus (1965)
Duty largely consists of pretending that the trivial is critical.
The Magus (1965)
There are only two races on this planet — the intelligent and the stupid.
He had the charm of all people who believe implicitly in themselves, that of integration.
There’s a card in the Tarot pack called The Magus. The magician, conjuror. Two of his traditional symbols are the lily and the rose.
The Magus (1965)
If a person is intelligent, then of course he is either an agnostic or an atheist. Just as he is a physical coward. They are automatic definitions of high intelligence.
The Magus (1965)
If you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know, but pity yourself for what it did.
Daniel Martin (1977)
Most marriages recognize this paradox: Passion destroys passion; we want what puts an end to wanting what we want.
The Aristos (1964)
That is the truth. Not the hammer and sickle. Not the stars and stripes. Not the cross. Not the sun. Not gold. Not yin and yang. But the smile.
The Magus (1965)
For a moment, in that dark Dorset night, reason and science dissolved; life was a dark machine, a sinister astrology, a verdict at birth and without appeal, a zero over all.
The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969)
The princess calls, but there is no one, now, to hear her.
The Ebony Tower (1974)
Narcissism: when one grows too old to believe in one's uniqueness, one falls in love with one's complexity.
Daniel Martin (1977)
I am talking about the general psychological health of the species, man. He needs the existence of mysteries, not their solution.
Daniel Martin (1977)
All good science is art. And all good art is science.
Daniel Martin (1977)
She seemed older to me, over-experienced by travel; needing to be learnt again, and I hadn’t the energy.
Daniel Martin (1977)
I know what I am to him. A butterfly he has always wanted to catch.
The Collector (1963)
I didn’t know at that time Emily Dickinson’s great definition, her 'Publication is not the business of poets’; being a poet is all, being known as a poet is nothing.
Daniel Martin (1977)
I played him the Goldberg Variations. If one wishes to reduce a sensitive German to tears there is no surer lachrymatory.
Daniel Martin (1977)