Gertrude Stein Quotes

255 Sourced Quotes

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

Gertrude Stein
The idea of enemies is awful it makes one stop remembering eternity and the fear of death. That is what enemies are. Possessions are the same as enemies only less so, they too make one forget eternity and the fear of death.

Gertrude Stein
Clarity is of no importance because nobody listens and nobody knows what you mean no matter what you mean, nor how clearly you mean what you mean. But if you have vitality enough of knowing enough of what you mean, somebody and sometime and sometimes a great many will have to realize that you know what you mean and so they will agree that you mean what you know, what you know you mean, which is as near as anybody can come to understanding any one.

Gertrude Stein
Would I if I could by pushing a button would I kill five thousand Chinamen if I could save my brother from anything. Well I was very fond of my brother and I could completely imagine his suffering and I replied that five thousand Chinamen were something I could not imagine and so it was not interesting.
One has to remember that about imagination, that is when the world gets dull when everybody does not know what they can or what they cannot really imagine.

Gertrude Stein
The deepest thing in any one is the conviction of the bad luck that follows boasting.

Gertrude Stein
In a war everybody always knows all about Switzerland, in peace times it is just Switzerland but in war time it is the only country that everybody has confidence in, everybody.

Gertrude Stein
Do you know because I tell you so, or do you know, do you know.

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

Gertrude Stein
One of the pleasant things those of us who write or paint do is to have the daily miracle. It does come.

Gertrude Stein
The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.

Gertrude Stein
I can eat it with a spoon or with a soup ladle or anything and I like it.

Gertrude Stein
I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences.

Gertrude Stein
Everybody thinks that this civilization has lasted a very long time but it really does take very few grandfathers' granddaughters to take us back to the dark ages.

Gertrude Stein
There will never be anything in America more interesting than the Civil War, never.

Gertrude Stein
I manage to think twice about everything
Why will they like me as they do
Or not as they do
Why will they praise me as they do
Or praise me not not as they do.

Gertrude Stein
The earth is the earth as a peasant sees it, the world is the world as a duchess sees it, and anyway a duchess would be nothing if the earth was not there as the peasant tills it.

Gertrude Stein
If anything is a surprise then there is not much difference between older and younger because the only thing that does make anybody older is that they cannot be surprised.

Gertrude Stein
Ladies there is no neutral position for us to assume.

Gertrude Stein
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.

Gertrude Stein
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.

Gertrude Stein
She was a tempting dog, she loved to tempt other dogs to do what they should not. She never did what she should not but they did when she showed them where it was.

Gertrude Stein
I talk a lot I like to talk and I talk even more than that I may say I talk most of the time and I listen a fair amount too and as I have said the essence of being a genius is to be able to talk and listen to listen while talking and talk while listening but and this is very important very important indeed talking has nothing to do with creation.

Gertrude Stein
I always wanted to be historical, from almost a baby on, I felt that way about it.

Gertrude Stein
Well money is not easy to describe. It is easy to lose but it cannot be lost, and no one can get really get used to it.

Gertrude Stein
It often makes me know that as a cousin of mine once said about money, money is always there but the pockets change; it is not in the same pockets after a change, and that is all there is to say about money.

Gertrude Stein
Each generation has something different at which they are all looking.

Gertrude Stein
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.

Gertrude Stein
After all human beings have to live dogs too so as not to know that time is passing, that is the whole business of living to go on so they will not know that time is passing, that is why they get drunk that is why they like to go to war, during a war there is the most complete absence of the sense that time is passing a year of war lasts so much longer than any other year. After all that is what life is and that is the reason there is no Utopia, little or big young or old dog or man everybody wants every minute so filled that they are not conscious of that minute passing. It's just as well they do not think about it you have to be a genius to live in it and know it to exist in it and express it to accept it and deny it by creating it.

Gertrude Stein
This is the real thing of disillusion that no one, not any one really is believing, seeing, understanding, thinking anything as you are thinking, believing, seeing, understanding such a thing.

Gertrude Stein
Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.

Gertrude Stein