Top 363 Quotes & Sayings by Gertrude Stein - Page 2

It is not what France gave you but what it did not take from you that was important.

The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it.

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.

Men and girls, men and girls: Artificial swine and pearls.

Human beings are interested in two things. They are interested in the reality and interested in telling about it.

It is so friendly so simply friendly and though inevitable not a sadness and though occurring not a shock.

Remarks are not literature.

In France one must adapt oneself to the fragrance of a urinal.

It is always a mistake to be plain-spoken.

There is a difference between twenty-nine and thirty. When you are twenty-nine it can be the beginning of everything. When you are thirty it can be the end of everything.

Generally speaking, everyone is more interesting doing nothing than doing anything.

I do want to get rich but I never want to do what there is to do to get rich.

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.

There is no real reality to a really imagined life any more.

I've been rich and I've been poor. It's better to be rich.

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.

Action and reaction are equal and opposite.

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.

There is no such thing as being good to your wife.

One does not get better but different and older and that is always a pleasure.

Very likely education does not make very much difference.

Everyone gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.

Communists are people who fancied that they had an unhappy childhood.

There is too much fathering going on just now and there is no doubt about it fathers are depressing.

Do you know because I tell you so, or do you know, do you know.

Men cannot count, they do not know that two and two make four if women do not tell them so.

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.

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.

A house in the country is not the same as a country house.

Once more I can climb about and remind you that a woman in this epoch does the important literary thinking.

Supposing everyone lived at one time what would they say. They would observe that stringing string beans is universal.

The difference between saints, forget-me-nots, and mountains, have to, have to, have to at a time.

I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed.

I rarely believe anything, because at the time of believing I am not really there to believe.

It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for the future, none at all. It certainly is extraordinary, but it is certainly true.

Americans are very friendly and very suspicious, that is what Americans are and that is what always upsets the foreigner, who deals with them, they are so friendly how can they be so suspicious they are so suspicious how can they be so friendly but they just are.

What is music. A passion for colonies not a love of country.

Literature - creative literature - unconcerned with sex, is inconceivable.

Every adolescent has that dream every century has that dream every revolutionary has that dream, to destroy the family.

I think the reason I am important is that I know everything.

The minute you or anybody else knows what you are you are not it, you are what you or anybody else knows you are and as everything in living is made up of finding out what you are it is extraordinarily difficult really not to know what you are and yet to be that thing.

Name any name and then remember everybody you ever knew who bore that name. Are they all alike. I think so.

It is funny the two things most men are proudest of is the thing that any man can do and doing does in the same way, that is being drunk and being the father of their son.

I wish that I was where I am.

Nothing could bother me more than the way a thing goes dead once it has been said.

It is better to lose and win, than win and be defeated.

You are extraordinary within your limits, but your limits are extraordinary!

Ladies there is no neutral position for us to assume.

In the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling.

Coffee is real good when you drink it gives you time to think. It's a lot more than just a drink; it's something happening. Not as in hip, but like an event, a place to be, but not like a location, but like somewhere within yourself. It gives you time, but not actual hours or minutes, but a chance to be, like be yourself, and have a second cup.

You will write if you will write without thinking of the result in terms of a result, but think of the writing in terms of discovery, which is to say that creation must take place between the pen and the paper, not before in a thought or afterwards in a recasting... It will come if it is there and if you will let it come.

Every day is a renewal, every morning the daily miracle. This joy you feel is life.

Forget grammar and think about potatoes

There are two kinds of men and women, those who have in them resisting as their way of winning those who have in them attacking as their way of winning.

Whoever said money can't buy happiness didn't know where to shop

Love: the skillful audacity required to share an inner life.

It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business

Suppose no one asked a question. What would the answer be?

You look ridiculous if you dance You look ridiculous if you don't dance So you might as well dance.

How I wish I were able to say what I think.