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Katherine Mansfield Quotes
1888–1923 New Zealand
Katherine Mansfield Murry (14 October 1888 – 9 January 1923), born Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp, was a New Zealand poet and writer of short fiction, who wrote under the name Katherine Mansfield.
New Zealand Authors Poets Short story writers Also known as: Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp, Mansfield, Katherine
Random Katherine Mansfield quote
29 quotes
I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.
Katherine Mansfield : A Biography (1953)
To acknowledge the presence of fear is to give birth to failure.
By health I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with what I love — the earth and the wonders thereof — the sea — the sun.
When we can begin to take our failures nonseriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.
I want, by understanding myself, to understand others.
I have made it a rule of my life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy, and no one who intends to become a writer can afford to indulge in it. You can't get it into shape; you can't build on it; it's only good for wallowing in.
Warm, eager, living life — to be rooted in life — to learn, to desire to know, to feel, to think, to act. That is what I want. And nothing less.
How hard it is to escape from places. However carefully one goes they hold you — you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences — little rags and shreds of your very life.
Whenever I prepare for a journey I prepare as though for death. Should I never return, all is in order. This is what life has taught me.
The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.
Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.
It's a terrible thing to be alone — yes it is — it is — but don't lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath — as terrible as you like — but a mask.
The world to me is a dream and the people in it are sleepers. I have known a few instances of intensity but that is all. I want to find a world in which these instances are united.
Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must become Love. This is the mystery. This is what I must do.
Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.
To work — to work! It is such infinite delight to know that we still have the best things to do.
I am treating you as my friend, asking you to share my present minuses in the hope I can ask you to share my future pluses.
Would you not like to try all sorts of lives — one is so very small — but that is the satisfaction of writing — one can impersonate so many people.
I feel happy — deep down. All is well.
Were we positive, eager, real — alive? No, we were not. We were a nothingness shot with gleams of what might be.
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