John Galsworthy Quotes

1867–1933 England

John Galsworthy OM (14 August 1867 – 31 January 1933) was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga (1906–1921) and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter.

England
Activists
Essayists
Nobel laureates
Novelists

Also known as: Galsworthy, John

Random John Galsworthy quote

41 quotes

The value of a sentiment is the amount of sacrifice you are prepared to make for it.

If you do not think about the future, you cannot have one.

Swan Song (1928)

It isn't enough to love people because they're good to you, or because in some way or other you're going to get something by it. We have to love because we love loving.

A Bit O' Love (1915)

Justice is a machine that, when someone has once given it the starting push, rolls on of itself.

Art is the great and universal refreshment. For Art is never dogmatic; holds no brief for itself; you may take it, or you may leave it.

Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)

I don't know much about morality and that, but there is this: It's always worth while before you do anything to consider whether it's going to hurt another person more than is absolutely necessary.

In Chancery (1920)

How to save the old that's worth saving, whether in landscape, houses, manners, institutions, or human types, is one of our greatest problems, and the one that we bother least about.

One More River (1933)

Love of beauty is really only the sex instinct, which nothing but complete union satisfies.

Saint's Progress (1919)

Everything known before it happens; and headlines twice the size of the events.

One More River (1933)

Love! Beyond measure — beyond death — it nearly kills. But one wouldn't have been without it.

Beyond (1917)

A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.

Maid in Waiting (1931)

Public opinion's always in advance of the law.

Truth it seems to me — is no absolute thing, but always relative, the essential symmetry in the varying relationships of life;...

One's eyes are what one is, one's mouth what one becomes.

Flowering Wilderness (1932)

If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.

Swan Song (1928)

He is but a poor philosopher who holds a view so narrow as to exclude forms not to his personal taste.

Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)

The balance between the sayings: 'Might is Right,' and 'Right is Might.' They're both half-truth, but the first was beating the other out of the field. All the rest of it is cant, you know.

Saint's Progress (1919)

Art is that imaginative expression of human energy, which, through technical concretion of feeling and perception, tends to reconcile the individual with the universal, by exciting in him impersonal emotion.

Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)

The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy, the building of a house, the writing of a novel, the demolition of a bridge, and, eminently, the finish of a voyage.

One More River (1933)

There's just one rule for politicians all over the world: Don't say in Power what you say in Opposition; if you do, you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.

Maid in Waiting (1931)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: John Galsworthy (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.