Top 363 Quotes & Sayings by Gertrude Stein - Page 4

A creator is so completely contemporary that he has the appearance of being ahead of his generation.

The creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic.

I cannot write too much upon how necessary it is to be completely conservative that is particularly traditional in order to be free.

Nothing has happened today except kindness.

The way to resume is to resume. It is the only way. To resume.

She always says she dislikes the abnormal, it is so obvious. She says the normal is so much more simply complicated and interesting.

What is the use of being a little boy if you are growing up to be a man.

You have to learn to do everything, even to die.

Anyone who marries three girls from St Louis hasn't learned much.

It is nice in France they adapt themselves to everything slowly they change completely but all the time they know that they are as they were.

I am writing for myself and strangers. This is the only way that I can do it. Everybody is a real one to me, everybody is like some one else too to me. No one of them that I know can want to know it and so I write for myself and strangers.

You have to know what you want to get it.

When you earn it and spend it you do know the difference between three dollars and a million dollars, but when you say it and vote it, it all sounds the same.

What was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there.

Melanctha Herbert was always losing what she had in all the things she saw. Melanctha was always being left when she was not leaving others. Melanctha Herbert always loved too hard and much too often. She was always full with mystery and subtle movements and denials and vague distrusts and complicated disillusions. Then Melanctha would be sudden and impulsive and unbounded in some faith, and then she would suffer and be strong in her repression. Melanctha Herbert was always seeking rest and quiet and always she could only find new ways to be in trouble.

One never discusses anything with anybody who can understand one discusses things with people who cannot understand.

it is nice that nobody writes as they talk and that the printed language is different from the spoken otherwise you could not lose yourself in books and of course you do you completely do.

French people do like good fighting, they like it better than anything.

it is all the question of identity. ... As long as the outside does not put a value on you it remains outside but when it does put a value on you then it gets inside or rather if the outside puts a value on you then all your inside gets to be outside.

A writer must always try to have a philosophy and he should also have a psychology and a philology and many other things. Without a philosophy and a psychology and all these various other things he is not really worthy of being called a writer. I agree with Kant and Schopenhauer and Plato and Spinoza and that is quite enough to be called a philosophy. But then of course a philosophy is not the same thing as a style.

Generally speaking anybody is more interesting doing nothing than doing anything.

There is no passion more dominant and instinctive in the human spirit than the need of the country to which one belongs.... The time comes when nothing in the world is so important as a breath of one's own particular climate. If it were one's last penny it would be used for that return passage.

From the very nature of progress, all ages must be transitional.

As there was never any question there was never any answer.

Even the propagandists on the radio find it very difficult to really say let alone believe that the world will be a happy place, of love and peace and plenty, and that the lion will lie down with the lamb and everybody will believe anybody.

It is inevitable when one has a great need of something one finds it. What you need you attract like a lover.

Mostly every one is needing some one to be one listening to that one being one being one boasting.

Asparagus in a lean in a lean is to hot. This makes it art and it is wet weather wet weather wet

each generation has something different at which they are all looking.

I think one is naturally impressed by anything having a beginning a middle and an ending when one is beginning writing and that it is a natural thing because when one is emerging from adolescence, which is really when one first begins writing one feels that one would not have been one emerging from adolescence if there had not been a beginning and a middle and an ending to anything.

The kind of loving women and men have in them and the ways it comes out from them makes for them the bottom nature in them, gives to them their kind of thinking, makes the character they have all their living in them, makes them then their kind of women and men and there are always many millions made of each kind of them.

Since the war nothing is so really frightening not the dark not alone in a room or anything on a road or a dog or a moon but two things, yes, indigestion and high places they are frightening.

This is the place of places and and it is here.

To complicate things in new ways, that is really very easy; but to see things in new ways, that is difficult and that is why genius is so rare.

An audience is pleasant if you have it, it is flattering and flattering is agreeable always, but if you have an audience the being an audience is their business, they are the audience you are the writer, let each attend to their own business.

The family is always the family but during vacations it is an extended family and that is exhausting.

I am I because my little dog knows me but, creatively speaking the little dog knowing that you are you and your recognising that he knows, that is what destroys creation. That is what makes school.

There is too much fathering going on just now and there is no doubt about it fathers are depressing. Everybody now-a-days is a father, there is father Mussolini and father Hitler and father Roosevelt and father Stalin and father Trotsky and father Blum and father Franco is just commencing now and there are ever so many more ready to be one. Fathers are depressing. England is the only country now that has not got one and so they are more cheerful there than anywhere. It is a long time now that they have not had any fathering and so their cheerfulness is increasing.

Poetry is essentially the discovery, the love, the passion for the name of everything.

Governing is occupying but not interesting, governments are occupying but not interesting.

it is a surprising thing that the largest city in the world should have a population as gentle and pleasant and intimate and considerate and comforting as a little bit of a place where everybody knows everybody and everything, but astonishing or not it is perfectly true and the inhabitants of New York are just like that, and they are like that and this thing is a delightful, natural and gentle and sweet and comforting thing.

The only thing that is different from one time to another is what is seen and what is seen depends upon how everybody is doing everything.

If you are a thinker, you will change the language. You will not use words the way others do.

There are so many ways of earning a living and most of them are failures.

When I said. A rose is a rose is a rose. And then later made that into a ring I made poetry and what did I do I caressed completely caressed and addressed a noun.

A novel is what you dream in your night sleep. A novel is not waking thoughts although it is written and thought with waking thoughts.

Argument is to me the air I breathe.

Repeating is the whole of living and by repeating comes understanding, and understanding is to some the most important part of living.

College professors have two bad traits. They are logical and they are easily flattered.

Patriarchal Poetry makes mistakes.

If everyone were not so indolent they would realise that beauty is beauty even when it is irritating and stimulating not only when it is accepted and classic.

More and more I am certain that the only difference between man and animals is that men can count and animals cannot and if they count they mostly do count money.

One must either accept some theory or else believe one's own instinct or follow the world's opinion.

A nice war is a war where everybody who is heroic is a hero, and everybody more or less is a hero in a nice war. Now this war is not at all a nice war.

I have been the creative literary mind of the century.

it is a peaceful thing to be one succeeding.

There is no beginning to an end / But there is a beginning and an end / To beginning.

Hope in gates, hope in spoons, hope in doors, hope in tables, no hope in daintiness and determination. Hope in dates.

A saint a real saint never does anything, a martyr does something but a really good saint does nothing, and so I wanted to have Four Saints who did nothing and I wrote the Four Saints In Three Acts and they did nothing and that was everything. Generally speaking anybody is more interesting doing nothing than doing something.

Water astonishing and difficult altogether makes a meadow and a stroke.