Kathleen Norris Quotes

86 Sourced Quotes

I always say that if the men had to have 'em every other time, there'd only be two babies, his and then hers, and then no more!

Kathleen Norris
Never in the history of the big, round world has anything like us occurred.

Kathleen Norris
Changing husbands is only changing troubles...

Kathleen Norris
Both prayer and poetry begin deep within a person, beyond the reach of language.

Kathleen Norris
There are men I could spend eternity with. But not this life.

Kathleen Norris
It's a strange sort of civilization to pose under the name of Christ. Christ had no double standard of morals; Christ forgave. Law is all very well, society has its uses, I have no doubt, but there are higher standards than either!

Kathleen Norris
We Irish are a queer unbalanced lot, but God knows what a cold, hard place the world would be without us!

Kathleen Norris
Happiness frightened her as solitude and loneliness never had done.

Kathleen Norris
For friendship is an art, and very few persons are born with a natural gift for it.

Kathleen Norris
When you are young you are surprised if everything isn't a success, and when you get older you're mildly surprised if anything is.

Kathleen Norris
In middle age we are apt to reach the horrifying conclusion that all sorrow, all pain, all passionate regret and loss and bitter disillusionment are self-made.

Kathleen Norris
There is no solitude in the world like that of the big city.

Kathleen Norris
There seems to be so much more winter than we need this year.

Kathleen Norris
I write what I would like to read – what I think other women would like to read. If what I write makes a woman in the Canadian mountains cry and she writes and tells me about it, especially if she says 'I read it to Tom when he came in from work and he cried too,' I feel I have succeeded.

Kathleen Norris
The mystery that draws one human being toward another must remain a mystery to the end.

Kathleen Norris
My brother was what he is now; I never had a cent that he didn't borrow. He calls it borrowing.

Kathleen Norris
Blackmail on a large scale is respectable, like everything else on a large scale.

Kathleen Norris
If there were but one place in the world where we could find them [books], we must all be pilgrims. If one man possessed them all, we must all be suitors.

Kathleen Norris
I have discovered that middle-age is not a question of years. It is that moment in life when one realizes that one has exchanged, by a series of subtle shifts and substitutes, the vague and vaporous dreams of youth, for the definite and tangible realization.

Kathleen Norris
Times had changed; women could do things now that they couldn't do thirty years ago.

Kathleen Norris
Over and over again mediocrity is promoted because real worth isn't to be found.

Kathleen Norris
Life is very simple... It merely consists in learning how to accept the impossible, how to do without the indispensable, how to endure the insufferable. What could be easier?

Kathleen Norris
What of Heaven is only this earth, clean and right at last, and Hell only the realization of what we might have done, and didn't do — for each other!

Kathleen Norris
The only difference between men really seems to be that some wear baggy pants and own up to being sultans, and others don't!

Kathleen Norris
But somehow one never had time to stop and savor the taste of life as the stream of it flowed by. It would be good to find some quiet inlet where the waters were still enough for reflection, where one might sense the joy of the moment, rather than plan breathlessly for a dozen mingled treats in the future.

Kathleen Norris
Home ought to be our clearing house, the place from which we go forth lessoned and disciplined, and ready for life.

Kathleen Norris