Gerald Brenan Quotes

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Those who have some means think that the most important thing in the world is love. The poor know that it is money.

Gerald Brenan

Everyone is a bore to someone. That is unimportant. The thing to avoid is being a bore to oneself.

Gerald Brenan

Intellectuals are people who believe that ideas are of more importance than values; that is to say, their own ideas and other people's values.

Gerald Brenan

We are closer to the ants than to the butterflies. Very few people can endure much leisure.

Gerald Brenan

Poets and painters are outside the class system, or rather they constitute a special class of their own, like the circus people and the gypsies.

Gerald Brenan

Words are as recalcitrant as circus animals, and the unskilled trainer can crack his whip at them in vain.

Gerald Brenan

The more we feel sorry for ourselves, the less sorry others will feel for us. People don't waste their small store of sympathy on those who can provide it so richly for themselves.

Gerald Brenan

Married love is a stream that, after a certain length of time, sinks into the earth and flows underground. Something is there, but one does not know what. Only the vegetation shows that there is still water.

Gerald Brenan

You can't get at the truth by writing history; only the novelist can do that.

Gerald Brenan

Gerald Brenan

Creative Commons

Born: April 7, 1894

Died: January 19, 1987 (aged 92)

Bio: Edward FitzGerald "Gerald" Brenan was a British writer and Hispanist who spent much of his life in Spain.

Known for:

South from Granada (1957)
The Spanish Labyrinth (1943)
The face of Spain (1952)
St John of the Cross: His Life and Poetry (1973)

Gerald Brenan on Wikipedia

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