Top 93 Quotes & Sayings by T. H. White

The race will find that capitalists and communists modify themselves so much during the ages that they end by being indistinguishable as democrats.

Is there anything more terrible than perpetual motion, than doing and doing and doing, without a reason, without a consciousness, without a change, without an end?

Wrongs have to be redressed by reason, not by force.

Nobody can be saved from anything, unless they save themselves. It is hopeless doing things for people - it is often very dangerous to do things at all - and the only thing worth doing for the race is to increase its stock of ideas. Then, if you make available a larger stock, people are at liberty to help themselves from out of it. By this process the means of improvement is offered, to be accepted or rejected freely, and there is a faint hope of progress in the course of millennia. Such is the business of the philosopher, to open new ideas. It is not his business to impose them on people.

Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance.

We find that at present the human race is divided politically into one wise man, nine knaves, and ninety fools out of every hundred. That is, by an optimistic observer. The nine knaves assemble themselves under the banner of the most knavish among them, and become politicians; the wise man stands out, because he knows himself to be hopelessly out-numbered, and devotes himself to poetry, mathematics or philosophy; while the ninety fools plod off behind the banners of the nine villains, according to fancy, into the labyrinths of chicanery, malice and warfare.

God is love, the parson whined. Yes, and is he also blind?

Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts uncritically--to those who hardly think about us in return.

But they woke him with words, their cruel bright weapons.

If there is one thing I can't stand, it is stupidity. I always say that stupidity is the Sin against the Holy Ghost.

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails.

Those who lived by the sword were forced to die by it.

It seems, in tragedy, that innocence is not enough.

I think I ought to have some eddication,"said the Wart, "I can't think of anything to do.

Yes, that is the equality of man. Slaughter anybody who is better than you are, and then we shall be equal soon enough. All equally dead.

In war, our elders may give the orders...but it is the young who have to fight.

Aviators live by hours, not by days.

It is a pity that there are no big creatures to prey on humanity. If there were enough dragons and rocs, perhaps mankind would turn its might against them. Unfortunately man is preyed upon by microbes, which are too small to be appreciated.

[Kay] was not at all an unpleasant person really, but clever, quick, proud, passionate and ambitious. He was one of those people who would be neither a follower nor a leader, but only an aspiring heart, impatient in the failing body which imprisoned it.

Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.

Middle-aged people can balance between believing in God and breaking all the commandments without difficulty.

I would recommend a solo flight to all prospective suicides. It tends to make clear the issue of whether one enjoys being alive or not.

You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn.

Might does not make right! Right makes right!

They made me see that the world was beautiful if you were beautiful, and that you couldn't get unless you gave. And you had to give without wanting to get.

The Destiny of Man is to unite, not to divide. If you keep on dividing you end up as a collection of monkeys throwing nuts at each other out of separate trees.

The best thing for being sad, is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails ... Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.

I can imagine nothing more terrifying than an Eternity filled with men who were all the same. The only thing which has made life bearable…has been the diversity of creatures on the surface of the globe.

Only fools want to be great.

War is like a fire. One man may start it, but it will spread all over. It is not about any one thing in particular.

Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness.

The destiny of man is an individualistic destiny.

It is the bad people who need to have principles to restrain them.

I am an anarchist, like any other sensible person. ~ Merlyn

It is good to put your life in other people's hands.

A lot of brainless unicorns swaggering about and calling themselves educated just because they can push each other off a horse with a bit of a stick! It makes me tired.

My boy, you shall be everything in the world, animal, vegetable, mineral, protista, or virus, for all I care-before I have done with you-but you will have to trust my superior backsight. The time is not yet ripe for you to be a hawk... so you may as well sit down for the moment and learn to be a human being.

Were they, for some purpose almost too cunning for belief, only disguised as themselves?

God is love, the bishops tell. Yes, I know, But love is hell.

Life is too bitter already, without territories and wars and noble feuds

a king can only work with his best tools.

But there was a time when each of us stood naked before the world, confronting life as a serious problem with which we were intimately and passionately concerned... There was a time when Free Love versus Catholic Morality was a question of as much importance to our hot bodies as if a pistol had been clapped to our heads. Further back, there were times when we wondered with all our souls what the world was, what love was, what we were ourselves.

He did not like the grown-ups who talked down to him, but the ones who went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to leap along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words, and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned. He had the glee of the porpoise then, pouring and leaping through strange seas.

We cannot build the future by avenging the past.

The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else do it wrong without comment.

The best thing for being sad ... is to learn something.

Now, in their love, which was stronger, there were the seeds of hatred and fear and confusion growing at the same time: for love can exist with hatred, each preying on the other, and this is what gives it its greatest fury.

Grown-ups have developed an unpleasant habit of comforting themselves for their degradation by pretending that children are childish.

If it takes a million years for a fish to become a reptile, has Man, in our few hundred, altered out of recognition?

There is one fairly good reason for fighting - and that is, if the other man starts it. You see, wars are a great wickedness, perhaps the greatest wickedness of a wicked species. They are so wicked that they must not be allowed. When you can be perfectly certain that the other man started them, then is the time when you might have a sort of duty to stop them.

Dogs, like very small children, are quite mad.

The unicorn was white, with hoofs of silver and graceful horn of pearl... The glorious thing about him was his eye. There was a faint bluish furrow down each side of his nose, and this led to the eye sockets, and surrounded them in a pensive shade. The eyes, circled by this sad and beautiful darkness, were so sorrowful, lonely, gentle and nobly tragic, that they killed all other emotions except love.

There is a thing called knowledge of the world, which people do not have until they are middle-aged. It is something which cannot be taught to younger people, because it is not logical and does not obey laws which are constant. It has no rules. Only, in the long years which bring women to the middle of life, a sense of balance develops...when she is beginning to hate her used body, she suddenly finds that she can do it. She can go on living.

The destiny of man is to unite, not to divide.

People commit suicide through weakness, not through strength.

The bravest people are the ones who don’t mind looking like cowards.

If people reach perfection they vanish, you know.

The miracle was that he had been allowed to do a miracle. And ever, says Mallory, Sir Lancelot wept, as he had been a child that had been beaten.

Believe me, the so-called primitive races who worshipped animals as gods were not so daft as people choose to pretend. At least they were humble. Why should not God have come to the earth as an earth-worm? There are a great many more worms than men, and they do a great deal more good.

Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.