John Galsworthy Quotes

61 Sourced Quotes

The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy, the building of a house, the writing of a novel, the demolition of a bridge, and, eminently, the finish of a voyage.

John Galsworthy
One's eyes are what one is, one's mouth what one becomes.

John Galsworthy
Memory heaps dead leaves on corpse-like deeds, from under which they do but vaguely offend the sense.

John Galsworthy
It is an age of stir and change, a season of new wine and old bottles. Yet, assuredly, in spite of breakages and waste, a wine worth the drinking is all the time being made.

John Galsworthy
What is creative instinct, if not an incessant living sympathy with Nature, a constant craving like that of Nature's own, to fashion something new out of all that comes within the grasp of those faculties with which Nature has endowed us? The qualities of vision, of fancy, and of imaginative power, are no more divorced from Nature, than are the qualities of common-sense and courage. They are rarer, that is all.

John Galsworthy
Art is the great and universal refreshment. For Art is never dogmatic; holds no brief for itself; you may take it, or you may leave it. It does not force itself rudely where it is not wanted. It is reverent to all tempers, to all points of view. But it is wilful — the very wind in the comings and goings of its influence, an uncapturable fugitive, visiting our hearts at vagrant, sweet moments; since we often stand even before the greatest works of Art without being able quite to lose ourselves! That restful oblivion comes, we never quite know when — and it is gone! But when it comes, it is a spirit hovering with cool wings, blessing us from least to greatest, according to our powers; a spirit deathless and varied as human life itself.

John Galsworthy
It was such a spring day as breathes into a man an ineffable yearning, a painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand motionless, looking at the leaves or grass, and fling out his arms to embrace he knows not what.

John Galsworthy
Religion was nearly dead because there was no longer real belief in future life; but something was struggling to take its place — service — social service — the ants' creed, the bees' creed.

John Galsworthy
Slang is vigorous and apt. Probably most of our vital words were once slang.

John Galsworthy
If you do not think about the future, you cannot have one.

John Galsworthy
I'm bad, he said, pouting — been bad all the week; don't sleep at night. The doctor can't tell why. He's a clever fellow, or I shouldn't have him, but I get nothing out of him but bills.

John Galsworthy
The seeing of things as they really are — the seeing of a proportion veiled from other eyes (together with the power of expression), is what makes a man an artist. What makes him a great artist is a high fervour of spirit, which produces a superlative, instead of a comparative, clarity of vision.

John Galsworthy
Looking back on the long-stretched-out body of one's work, it is interesting to mark the endless duel fought within a man between the emotional and critical sides of his nature, first one, then the other, getting the upper hand, and too seldom fusing till the result has the mellowness of full achievement. One can even tell the nature of one's readers, by their preference for the work which reveals more of this side than of that.

John Galsworthy
He was afflicted by the thought that where Beauty was, nothing ever ran quite straight, which, no doubt, was why so many people looked on it as immoral.

John Galsworthy
Everything known before it happens; and headlines twice the size of the events.

John Galsworthy
I drink the wine of aspiration and the drug of disillusion. Thus am I never dull.

John Galsworthy
Summer — summer — summer! The soundless footsteps on the grass!

John Galsworthy
I don't know much about morality and that, but there is this: It's always worth while before you do anything to consider whether it's going to hurt another person more than is absolutely necessary.

John Galsworthy
Society is built on marriage... marriage and its consequences.

John Galsworthy
Take modern courtships! They resulted in the same thing as under George the Second, but took longer to reach it, owing to the motor-cycle and the standing lunch.

John Galsworthy
The law is what it is-a majestic edifice, sheltering all of us, each stone of which rests on another.

John Galsworthy
KEITH:.I don't see the use in drawin' hard and fast rules. You only have to break 'em.

John Galsworthy
If one thing is more certain than another — which is extremely doubtful —

John Galsworthy
When a Forsyte was engaged, married, or born, the Forsytes were present; when a Forsyte diedbut no Forsyte had as yet died; they did not die; death being contrary to their principles, they took precautions against it, the instinctive precautions of highly vitalised persons who resent encroachments on their property.

John Galsworthy
Honesty of thought and speech and written word is a jewel, and they who curb prejudice and seek honorably to know and speak the truth are the only builders of a better life.

John Galsworthy
KEITH:.I don't see the use in drawin' hard and fast rules. You only have to break 'em.

John Galsworthy
The young man who, at the end of September, 1924, dismounted from a taxicab in South Square, Westminster, was so unobtrusively American that his driver had some hesitation in asking for double his fare. The young man had no hesitation in refusing it.

John Galsworthy
Wealth is a means to an end, not the end itself. As a synonym for health and happiness, it has had a fair trial and failed dismally.

John Galsworthy
There are moments when Nature reveals the passion hidden beneath the careless calm of her ordinary moods-violent spring flashing white on almond-blossom through the purple clouds; a snowy, moonlit peak, with its single star, soaring up to the passionate blue; or against the flames of sunset, an old yew-tree standing dark guardian of some fiery secret.

John Galsworthy
There are houses whose souls have passed into the limbo of Time, leaving their bodies in the limbo of London. Such was not quite the condition of Timothy's on the Bayswater Road, for Timothy's soul still had one foot in Timothy Forsyte's body, and Smither kept the atmosphere unchanging, of camphor and port wine and house whose windows are only opened to air it twice a day.

John Galsworthy