Gertrude Stein Quotes

255 Sourced Quotes

It is hard living down the tempers we are born with. We all begin well, for in our youth there is nothing we are more intolerant of than our own sins writ large in others and we fight them fiercely in ourselves; but we grow old and we see that these our sins are of all sins the really harmless ones to own, nay that they give a charm to any character, and so our struggle with them dies away.

Gertrude Stein
More great Americans were failures than they were successes. They mostly spent their lives in not having a buyer for what they had for sale.

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
To know what one knows is frightening to live what one lives is soothing and though everybody likes to be frightened what they really have to have is soothing...

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

Gertrude Stein
It is a difficult thing to like anybody else's ideas of being funny.

Gertrude Stein
In America, everybody is, but some are more than others.

Gertrude Stein
Language as a real thing is not imitation either of sounds or colors or emotions it is an intellectual recreation and there is nopossible doubt about it and it is going to go on being that as long as humanity is anything.

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
Do not forget birthdays. This is in no way a propaganda for a larger population.

Gertrude Stein
If you do not remember while you are writing, it may seem confused to others but actually it is clear and eventually that clarity will be clear, that is what a master-piece is, but if you remember while you are writing it will seem clear at the time to any one but the clarity will go out of it that is what a master-piece is not.

Gertrude Stein
America is my country and Paris is my home town and it is as it has come to be.

Gertrude Stein
A writer must always try to have a philosophy and he should also have a psychology and a philology and many other things. Without a philosophy and a psychology and all these various other things he is not really worthy of being called a writer. I agree with Kant and Schopenhauer and Plato and Spinoza and that is quite enough to be called a philosophy. But then of course a philosophy is not the same thing as a style.

Gertrude Stein
It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself.

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
The minute you or anybody else knows what you are you are not it, you are what you or anybody else knows you are and as everything in living is made up of finding out what you are it is extraordinarily difficult really not to know what you are and yet to be that thing.

Gertrude Stein
If nobody had to die how would there be room enough for any of us who now live to have lived.

Gertrude Stein
Governing is occupying but not interesting, governments are occupying but not interesting...

Gertrude Stein
In America... who is to stop congress from spending too much money. They will not stop themselves, that is certain. Everybody has to think about that now. Who is to stop them.

Gertrude Stein
Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.

Gertrude Stein
To know to know to love her so.
Four saints prepare for saints.

Gertrude Stein
A nice war is a war where everybody who is heroic is a hero, and everybody more or less is a hero in a nice war. Now this war is not at all a nice war.

Gertrude Stein
I like the feeling of words doing as they want to do and as they have to do.

Gertrude Stein
It is nice in France they adapt themselves to everything slowly they change completely but all the time they know that they are as they were.

Gertrude Stein
There is no pleasure so sweet as the pleasure of spending money but the pleasure of writing is longer. There is no denying that.

Gertrude Stein