Top 85 Quotes & Sayings by Phyllis Bottome

It is very a dangerous thing to have an idea that you will not practice.

Truth, though it has many disadvantages, is at least changeless. You can always find it where you left it.

There are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties or you alter yourself meeting them.

There is nothing final about a mistake, except its being taken as final.

Neither situations nor people can be altered by the interference of an outsider. If they are to be altered, that alteration must come from within.

To be in the right is often an expensive business.

Things that happen, however painful they are at the time, do not matter very much for long. Only how we behave to them matters.

No emergency excuses you from exercising tolerance.

Human beings don't show, any more than cities at dusk, their real necessities! And yet if you looked -- past the circle of outside lights, through the street walls still standing -- into the want and emptiness within!

We do good by ourselves, but we seldom do wrong alone.

Truth is its own defense.

if you listen long enough - or is it deep enough? - the silence of a lover can speak plainer than any words! Only you must know how to listen. Pain must have taught you how.

Death deceives relations often, and doctors sometimes, but the patient - never.

all daughters, even when most aggravated by their mothers, have a secret respect for them. They believe perhaps that they can do everything better than their mothers can, and many things they can do better, but they have not yet lived long enough to be sure how successfully they will meet the major emergencies of life, which lie, sometimes quite creditably, behind their mothers.

artists are exposed to great temptations: their eyes see paradise before their souls have reached it, and that is a great danger.

I wonder how often not the intention but the desire springs up in a doctor's mind: 'Can I let this human being out of the trap of Life?

Our responsibility to ourselves comes first -- because in a sense what one is oneself is the responsibility that one has for others!

A blossom must break the sheath it has been sheltered by.

I am never at picnics. The ground was not meant to be sat upon in its raw state, I feel sure, and I prefer my food without either caterpillars or drafts!

Jane had that happy disposition which would like to imagine that every one really wishes the well-being of his neighbour and struggles, though sometimes rather disastrously, to help him towards it.

When lightning strikes, the mouse is sometimes burned with the farm.

it is the possibilities which are the most terrible things in life.

... not being liked has a certain virtue about it, if the reason for the dislike does not lie in yourself!

Life was a series of messes, and one spent one's time cleaning them up; if one had any heart at all one also gave a part of one's time to cleaning up those of other people.

it is better in the long run to be cheated than to cheat. I have learned that there is no middle way.

Time indeed has very little to do with living except at its beginning or near its end.

When a reserved person once begins to talk, nothing can stop him; and he does not want to have to listen, until he has quite finished his unfamiliar exertion.

This is the real tragedy of mankind, that until now the spirit of man has not been able to free itself, even along the path of its own development, from the tentacles of self-deception.

To be a Jew is to be strong with a strength that has outlived persecutions. It is to be wise against ignorance, honest against piracy, harmless against evil, kind against cruelty

Where there is laughter there is always more health than sickness.

Anger is like mild, it should not be kept too long.

Luck enters into every contingency. You are a fool if you forget it -- and a greater fool if you count upon it.

... one pets what one degrades; and one has to support what one has enfeebled

Curiosity is the only thing that really carries through time, isn't it? The creative curiosity, I mean, which fights its way into expression?

When you know a person particularly well, you cannot escape their ruffled feelings.

Lots of men hate women now-a-days. ... It was a man-made world, and now we're asking to go shares in the making.

Marriage! ... Why, it is like living in a thimble with a hippopotamus!

Taboos on the human heart are more dangerous than any risk we run by using our emotions. Sensation is the life of man; it is his actual energy. To suppress it is to lose creative power!

Truth is no man's slave - but lies - what magnificent servants they make.

Nobody can afford to appear more pleasant than they really are!

In my early life, and probably even today, it is not sufficiently understood that a child's education should include at least a rudimentary grasp of religion, sex, and money. Without a basic knowledge of these three primary facts in a normal human being's life --subjects which stir the emotions, create events and opportunities, and if they do not wholly decide must greatly influence an individual's personality --no human being's education can have a safe foundation.

Knowledge cannot be changed, but the use to which it may be put can very easily be changed.

People who talk of new lives believe there will be no new troubles.

All persecution is a sign of fear; for if we did not fear the power of an opinion different from our own, we should not mind others holding it.

It's a good thing to learn early that other people's opinions do not matter, unless they happen to be true.

She believed in letting children have a certain amount of rope, and only intervened at the last moment, in order to prevent their hanging themselves by it.

The only creative power I know is that of what might roughly be called 'love'; not of course a sentimental love: a far more impersonal and less individual emotion. I sometimes think that migratory birds may have it for each other. They fly in the same direction, and have never been seen to interfere with each other's flights.

When we refuse to accept our limitations, Nature, who is a stern realist, pays us out.

If money had been the way to save the world, Christ himself would have been rich.

To see a shadow and think it is a tree that is a pity; but to see a tree and to think it a shadow can be fatal.

There's nothing final about a mistake, except its being taken as final.

A refugee is as helpless as a new born child - but not so appealing! Besides, a new born child has no memories!

the unfortunate thing about worldliness is that its rewards are rather less than its appetites.

Morale is not a single instinct. It has many ingredients. A sense of personal responsibility, the natural courage of an individual, the amount of his acquired self-discipline -- and above all his interest in others -- these together make up the spirit of morale.

It is a very dangerous thing to have an idea that you will not practice.

There are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties, or you alter yourself to meet them.

If one has one cow, it is always better not to be too familiar with those who have seven.

That a Jew is despised or persecuted is bad for him, of course-but far worse for the Christian who does it-for although persecuted he can remain a good Jew-whereas no Christian who persecutes can possibly remain-if he ever was one-a good Christian.

Feelings change facts.

We cannot alter facts, but we can alter our ways of looking at them.