Phyllis Bottome Quotes

94 Sourced Quotes

A desire that has never been fulfilled is considerably less acute than one that has been fulfilled and then checked at the source.

Phyllis Bottome
Knowledge cannot be changed, but the use to which it may be put can very easily be changed.

Phyllis Bottome
The unfortunate thing about worldliness is that its rewards are rather less than its appetites.

Phyllis Bottome
No emergency excuses you from exercising tolerance.

Phyllis Bottome
Taboos on the human heart are more dangerous than any risk we run by using our emotions. Sensation is the life of man; it is his actual energy. To suppress it is to lose creative power!

Phyllis Bottome
Darkness began to drink up the last cold light upon the mountainside.

Phyllis Bottome
A man whose every exertion is bent upon showing up the flaws in his wife's character must be at least partially responsible for some of them.

Phyllis Bottome
A refugee is as helpless as a new born child — but not so appealing! Besides, a new born child has no memories!

Phyllis Bottome
The only creative power I know is that of what might roughly be called 'love'; not of course a sentimental love: a far more impersonal and less individual emotion. I sometimes think that migratory birds may have it for each other. They fly in the same direction, and have never been seen to interfere with each other's flights.

Phyllis Bottome
I am never at picnics. The ground was not meant to be sat upon in its raw state, I feel sure, and I prefer my food without either caterpillars or drafts!

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

Phyllis Bottome
Lots of men hate women now-a-days.... It was a man-made world, and now we're asking to go shares in the making.

Phyllis Bottome
Artists are exposed to great temptations: their eyes see paradise before their souls have reached it, and that is a great danger.

Phyllis Bottome
When a reserved person once begins to talk, nothing can stop him; and he does not want to have to listen, until he has quite finished his unfamiliar exertion.

Phyllis Bottome
People who talk of new lives believe there will be no new troubles.

Phyllis Bottome
To everything there is an end — except fear.

Phyllis Bottome
Some of us cling to our curses if we haven't anything better to cling to!

Phyllis Bottome
Her religion was that of all artists — obedience to the laws of her creative art.

Phyllis Bottome
It is you men who make war!... We, who have children, would never make it! Why should a woman be broken up in pain, to give her child life, only to see him carried away from her, to make food for guns?

Phyllis Bottome
A red-hot belief in eternal glory is probably the best antidote to human panic that there is.

Phyllis Bottome
We cannot alter facts, but we can alter our ways of looking at them.

Phyllis Bottome
About generosity Freya did not think at all — for those who practice it never weigh it.

Phyllis Bottome
Nothing ever really sets human nature free, but self-control.

Phyllis Bottome
That's the worst of devotion — its trade-mark is anxiety.

Phyllis Bottome
I wonder how often not the intention but the desire springs up in a doctor's mind: 'Can I let this human being out of the trap of Life?'

Phyllis Bottome
Pride had made Prue grow stubbornly silent, more silent than Ted wanted; and because women must lead up to love-making by conversation, bexause kisses only seem natural to them after tender words, Prue had grow extremely cold to Ted.

Phyllis Bottome
Life was a series of messes, and one spent one's time cleaning them up; if one had any heart at all one also gave a part of one's time to cleaning up those of other people.

Phyllis Bottome
Her beauty made her silences as important as speech and much less troublesome.

Phyllis Bottome
It is better in the long run to be cheated than to cheat. I have learned that there is no middle way.

Phyllis Bottome
You've been brought up to be nice — and that's a dangerous profession.

Phyllis Bottome