Top 123 Quotes & Sayings by Katherine Mansfield - Page 2

In fact, isn't it a joy - there is hardly a greater one - to find a new book, a living book, and to know that it will remain with you while life lasts?

Ach, Tchekov! Why are you dead? Why can’t I talk to you in a big darkish room at late evening—where the light is green from the waving trees outside? I’d like to write a series of Heavens: that would be one.

But the more poetry one reads the more one longs to read!

I have such a horror of telegrams that ask me how I am!! I always want to reply dead.

I am treating you as my friend, asking you to share my present minuses in the hope that I can ask you to share my future plusses.

I love the night. I love to feel the tide of darkness rising, slowly and slowly washing, turning over and over, lifting, floating, all that lies strewn upon the dark beach, all that lies hid in rocky hollows.

But one day we shall be rich, and the next poor. One day we shall dine in a palace and the next we'll sit in a forest and toast mushrooms on a hatpin.

Oh, impossible. Fancy cream puffs so soon after breakfast. The very idea made one shudder. All the same, two minutes later Jose and Laura were licking their fingers with that absorbed inward look that only comes from whipped cream.

... I'd always rather be with people who loved me too little rather than with people who loved me too much.

Now's the time when children's noses All become as red as roses And the colour of their faces Makes me think of orchard places Where the juicy apples grow, And tomatoes in a row.

That's all life is - something childish and very natural. Isn't it?

We can do whatever we wish to do provided our wish is strong enough. But the tremendous effort needed- one doesn't always want to make it-does one? ... But what else can be done? What's the alternative? What do you want most to do? That's what I have to keep asking myself, in the face of difficulties.

Perhaps it does not matter so very much what it is one loves in this world. But love something one must.

England is merely an island of beef swimming in a warm gulf stream of gravy.

I want so to live that I work with my hands and my feeling and my brain. I want a garden, a small house, grass, animals, books, pictures, music. And out of this, the expression of this, I want to be writing (Though I may write about cabmen. That’s no matter.) But warm, eager, living life — to be rooted in life — to learn, to desire, to feel, to think, to act. This is what I want. And nothing less. That is what I must try for.

if one really does try to find out why it is that people don't leave each other, one discovers a mystery. It is because they can't; they are bound. And nobody on earth knows what are the bonds that bind them except those two.

To acknowledge the presence of fear is to give birth to failure.

Can one do nothing for the dead? And for a long time the answer had been - Nothing!

The fields are snowbound no longer; There are little blue lakes and flags of tenderest green. The snow has been caught up into the sky- So many white clouds-and the blue of the sky is cold. Now the sun walks in the forest, He touches the bows and stems with his golden fingers; They shiver, and wake from slumber. Over the barren branches he shakes his yellow curls. Yet is the forest full of the sound of tears.... A wind dances over the fields. Shrill and clear the sound of her waking laughter, Yet the little blue lakes tremble And the flags of tenderest green bend and quiver.

What is it with me? Am I absolutely nobody, but merely inordinately vain? I do not know…. But I am most fearfully unhappy. That is all. I am so unhappy that I wish I was dead—yet I should be mad to die when I have not yet lived at all.

In the shortest sea voyage there is no sense of time. You have been down in the cabin for hours or days or years. Nobody knows or cares. You know all the people to the point of indifference. You do not believe in dry land any more - you are caught in the pendulum itself, and left there, idly swinging.

I am a recluse at present & do nothing but write & read & read & write

It is strange that there are times when I feel the stars are not at all solemn: they are secretly gay.

I really only have Perfect Fun with myself. Other people won't stop and look at the things I want to look at or, if they do, they stop to please me or to humor me or to keep the peace.

I think I hate snow, downright hate it. There is something stupefying in it, a kind of 'You must be worse before you're better,' and down it spins.

roses are the only flowers at garden-parties; the only flowers that everybody is certain of knowing.

Regret is an appalling waste of energy, and no one who intends to be a writer can afford to indulge in it.

If only one could tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools. With mushrooms it is so simple - you salt them well, put them aside and have patience. But with love, you have no sooner lighted on anything that bears even the remotest resemblance to it than you are perfectly certain it is not only a genuine specimen, but perhaps the only genuine mushroom ungathered.

Yes, my mother's death is a terrible sorrow to me. I feel - do you know what I mean - the silence of it so. She was more alive than anyone I have ever known.

Wind moving through grass so that the grass quivers. This moves me with an emotion I don't even understand.

Children are unaccountable little creatures.

The great thing to remember is we can do whatever we wish to do provided our wish is strong enough.

I feel I must live alone, alone, alone - with artists only to touch the door. Every artist cuts off his ear and nails it on the outside of the door for the others to shout into.

Ah, what happiness it is to be with people who all are happy, to press hands, press cheeks, smile into eyes.

I saw myself driving through Eternity in a timeless taxi.

Regret is an appalling waste of time.

All the wild sweetness of the flower Tangled against the wall. It was that magic, silent hour.... The branches grew so tall They twined themselves into a bower. The sun shown ... and the fall Of yellow blossom on the grass! You feel that golden rain? Both of you could not hold, alas, (both of you tried, in vain) A memory, stranger. So I pass.... It will not come again.

Courage is like a disobedient dog, once it starts running away it flies all the faster for your attempts to recall it.

Warm, eager, living life-to be rooted in life-to learn, to desire, to know, to feel, to think, to act. This is what I want. And nothing less. That is what I must try for.

I love this place; I love mountains and big skies and forests. And the weather is still supremely beautiful even though the lower peaks are powdered with fresh snow. But Heavens! What sun. It never has an ending. I am basking at this minute - half past four - too hot without a hat, & the sky is that transparent blue only to be seen in autumn - the forest trees steeped in light.

The ostrich burying its head in the sand does at any rate wish to convey the impression that its head is the most important part of it.

That is the fearful part of having been near death. One knows how easy it is to die. The barriers that are up for everybody else are down for you, and you've only to slip through.

Why! Why! Why is the middle-class so stodgy - so utterly without a sense of humor?

Isn't life,' she stammered, 'isn't life--' But what life was she couldn't explain. No matter. He quite understood. 'Isn't it, darling?' said Laurie.

To work - to work! It is such infinite delight to know that we still have the best things to do.

Why it should be such an effort to write to the people one loves I can't imagine. It's none at all to write to those who don't really count.

To be alive and to be a ‘writer’ is enough.

In the woods where snow is thick, bars of sunlight lay like pale fire.

we cling to our last pleasures as the tree clings to its last leaves.

Tidied all my papers. Tore up and ruthlessly destroyed much. This is always a great satisfaction.

I am going to enjoy life in Paris I know. It is so human and there is something noble in the city... It is a real city, old and fine and life plays in it for everybody to see.

Letters are the real curse of my existence. I hate to write them: I have to. If I don't, there they are - the great guilty gates barring my way.

Every time one leaves anywhere, something precious, which ought not to be killed, is left to die.

Winter is a terrible time for thin people - terrible! Why should it hound them down, fasten on them, worry them so? Why not, for a change, take a nip, take a snap at the fat ones who wouldn't notice? But no! It is sleek, warm, cat-like summer that makes the fat one's life a misery. Winter is all for bones.

I don't believe other people are ever as foolishly excited as I am while I'm working. How could they be? Writers would have to live in trees.

If you wish to live, you must first attend your own funeral.

As in the physical world, so in the spiritual world, pain does not last forever.

I love the evening star. Does that sound foolish? I used to go into the backyard, after sunset, and wait for it until it shone above the dark gum tree. I used to whisper 'There you are, my darling.' And just in that first moment it seemed to be shining for me alone. It seemed to understand this ... something which is like longing, and yet it is not longing. Or regret - it is more like regret.

conversation is like a dear little baby that is brought in to be handed round. You must rock it, nurse it, keep it on the move if you want it to keep smiling.

Better to write twaddle, anything, than nothing at all.