Phyllis Bottome Quotes

94 Sourced Quotes

She had settled down to age as if she found it very pleasant company.

Phyllis Bottome
Teobaldo Kurt Dubrik was a large stout man with a grand shock of hair, like the best type of sheepskin rug.

Phyllis Bottome
This is the real tragedy of mankind, that until now the spirit of man has not been able to free itself, even along the path of its own development, from the tentacles of self-deception.

Phyllis Bottome
Things that happen, however painful they are at the time, do not matter very much for long. Only how we behave to them matters.

Phyllis Bottome
When lightning strikes, the mouse is sometimes burned with the farm.

Phyllis Bottome
Love comes into your being like a tidal wave... sometimes it withdraws like a wave, till there isn't such a thing as a pool left, and every bit of your heart is as dry as seaweed beyond the wave's reach.

Phyllis Bottome
If money had been the way to save the world, Christ Himself would have been rich.

Phyllis Bottome
When we refuse to accept our limitations, Nature, who is a stern realist, pays us out.

Phyllis Bottome
The boy still has that uneasy half-deluded love a man never wholly loses for his mother.

Phyllis Bottome
He was so nearly honest a man, that his undigested lie, mortally disagreed with him.

Phyllis Bottome
Luck enters into every contingency. You are a fool if you forget it — and a greater fool if you count upon it.

Phyllis Bottome
With courage a human being is safe enough. And without it — he is never for one instant safe!

Phyllis Bottome
Her morality often changed color against the stronger color schemes of her wishes.

Phyllis Bottome
A blossom must break the sheath it has been sheltered by.

Phyllis Bottome
It is the possibilities which are the most terrible things in life.

Phyllis Bottome
Neither saints nor angels have ever increased my faith in this enigma Life; but what are called 'common men and women' have increased it.

Phyllis Bottome
Relays of nurses left her with the relieved alacrity of acrobats alighting from a trapeze.

Phyllis Bottome
Elvira always lied first to herself before she lied to anybody else, since this gave her a conviction of moral honesty.

Phyllis Bottome
Beatrice cut her conversation as an inspired dressmaker cuts expensive materials without the need of a pattern. The shape was in her mind; and it was sometimes a little alarming to watch the ruthless decision with which Beatrice wielded her conversational shears.

Phyllis Bottome
Heroes are unpredictable. They can make nonsense of almost any obstacle.

Phyllis Bottome
Cats are the most discreet of animals. They have soft coats and no hearts. What a philosophy! And how unfortunate that most of us have to part, first with our hearts and then with our soft coats, before we arrive at it!

Phyllis Bottome
Our responsibility to ourselves comes first — because in a sense what one is oneself is the responsibility that one has for others!

Phyllis Bottome
Nobody can afford to appear more pleasant than they really are!

Phyllis Bottome
Most people are dead, and none of them seem to mind it. One hears a great many complaints about life, doesn't one? And there are people I know who would certainly grumble — however dead they were — if there were anything to grumble at.

Phyllis Bottome
The darkness grew thinner and thinner like the walls of a bubble, before it breaks.

Phyllis Bottome