Phyllis Bottome Quotes

94 Sourced Quotes

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
She believed in letting children have a certain amount of rope, and only intervened at the last moment, in order to prevent their hanging themselves by it.

Phyllis Bottome
The two best subjects for conversation are talking shop and making love.

Phyllis Bottome
That a Jew is despised or persecuted is bad for him, of course — but far worse for the Christian who does it — for although persecuted he can remain a good Jew — whereas no Christian who persecutes can possibly remain — if he ever was one — a good Christian!

Phyllis Bottome
It is a good thing to learn early that other people's opinions do not matter, unless they happen to be true.

Phyllis Bottome
Truth is no man's slave — but lies — what magnificent servants they make.

Phyllis Bottome
To see a shadow and think it is a tree — that is a pity, but to see a tree and think it is a shadow can be fatal.

Phyllis Bottome
Death deceives relations often, and doctors sometimes, but the patient — never.

Phyllis Bottome
She was so sincere that she would think only one thought at a time; and her whole nature would be behind her thought.

Phyllis Bottome
One pets what one degrades; and one has to support what one has enfeebled.

Phyllis Bottome
A strip of pale daffodil, sharp as a razor blade, pried open the lid of the sky.

Phyllis Bottome