T. H. White Quotes

66 Sourced Quotes

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."

T. H. White
The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch somebody else doing it wrong, without comment.

T. H. White
I can imagine nothing more terrifying than an Eternity filled with men who were all the same. The only thing which has made life bearable…has been the diversity of creatures on the surface of the globe.

T. H. White
There is one fairly good reason for fighting - and that is, if the other man starts it. You see, wars are a great wickedness, perhaps the greatest wickedness of a wicked species. They are so wicked that they must not be allowed. When you can be perfectly certain that the other man started them, then is the time when you might have a sort of duty to stop them.

T. H. White
I will tell you something else, King, which may be a surprise for you. It will not happen for hundreds of years, but both of us are to come back.

T. H. White
They had a year of joy, twelve months of the strange heaven which the salmon know on beds of river shingle, under the gin-clear water. For twenty-four years they were guilty, but this first year was the only one which seemed like happiness. Looking back on it, when they were old, they did not remember that in this year it had ever rained or frozen. The four seasons were coloured like the edge of a rose petal for them.

T. H. White
If there is one thing I can't stand, it is stupidity. I always say that stupidity is the Sin against the Holy Ghost.

T. H. White
Helen whose face was fatal must have wept
Many salt tears to keep her eyes so bright
Many long nights alone: and every night
Men died, she cried, and happy Paris kept
Sweet Helen.

T. H. White
People commit suicide through weakness, not through strength.

T. H. White
My boy, you shall be everything in the world, animal, vegetable, mineral, protista, or virus, for all I care-before I have done with you-but you will have to trust my superior backsight. The time is not yet ripe for you to be a hawk... so you may as well sit down for the moment and learn to be a human being.

T. H. White
It is the bad people who need to have principles to restrain them.

T. H. White
Middle-aged people can balance between believing in God and breaking all the commandments without difficulty.

T. H. White
All forms of collectivism are mistaken, according to the human skull.

T. H. White
A spider is an air worm, as it is provided with nourishment from the air, which a long thread catches down to its small body.

T. H. White
If it takes a million years for a fish to become a reptile, has Man, in our few hundred, altered out of recognition?

T. H. White
The miracle was that he had been allowed to do a miracle. And ever, says Mallory, Sir Lancelot wept, as he had been a child that had been beaten.

T. H. White
The word "feral" has a kind of magic potency which allied itself to two other words, "ferocious" and "free." To revert to a feral state!

T. H. White
It was called a tribute before a battle and a ransom afterwards.

T. H. White
She hardly ever thought of him. He had worn a place for himself in some corner of her heart, as a sea shell, always boring against the rock, might do. The making of the place had been her pain. But now the shell was safely in the rock. It was lodged, and ground no longer.

T. H. White
Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance.

T. H. White
You run a grave risk, my boy," said the magician, "of being turned into a piece of bread, and toasted.

T. H. White
They made me see that the world was beautiful if you were beautiful, and that you couldn't get unless you gave. And you had to give without wanting to get.

T. H. White
Unfortunately we have tried to establish Right by Might, and you just can't do that

T. H. White
Perhaps he does not want to be friends with you until he knows what you are like. With owls, it is never easy-come-easy-go.

T. H. White
Mordred and Agravaine thought Arthur hypocritical—as all decent men must be, if you assume that decency can't exist.

T. H. White
Little child
Who was me once,
My pity on you—
And reverence.

If we could meet
Where I once strayed,
The betrayer
And the betrayed.

If we could win back
In Time's defiance,
Would you be afeared of me,
Ten-year-old Terence?

No, you would not fear.
You would love, trust,
Cherish, admire
This tedious dust.

For oh! we were all brimming once
With the sun-sparkled dew.
One heart could have loved this hulk—
The ignorant heart of you.

T. H. White
Ther days may come,
Ther days may go,
But still the light of Mem'ry weaves
Those gentle dreams/Of long ago

T. H. White
I would recommend a solo flight to all prospective suicides. It tends to make clear the issue of whether one enjoys being alive or not.

T. H. White
She (Maria) lived in an enormous house in the wilds of Northamptonshire, which was about four times longer than Buckingham Palace, but was falling down.

T. H. White
It is so fatally easy to make young children believe that they are horrible.

T. H. White