T. H. White Quotes

66 Sourced Quotes

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
Is there anything more terrible than perpetual motion, than doing and doing and doing, without a reason, without a consciousness, without a change, without an end?

T. H. White
I think I ought to have some eddication,"said the Wart, "I can't think of anything to do.

T. H. White
The fate of this man or that man was less than a drop, although it was a sparkling one, in the great blue motion of the sunlit sea.

T. H. White
Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness.

T. H. White
Love is a trick played on us by the forces of evolution. Pleasure is the bait laid down by the same. There is only power. Power is of the individual mind but the mind's power is not enough. Power of the body decides everything in the end and only might is right.

T. H. White
A lot of brainless unicorns swaggering about and calling themselves educated just because they can push each other off a horse with a bit of a stick! It makes me tired.

T. H. White
It has to be admitted that starving nations never seem to be quite so starving that they cannot afford to have far more expensive armaments than anybody else.

T. H. White
It is a pity that there are no big creatures to prey on humanity. If there were enough dragons and rocs, perhaps mankind would turn its might against them. Unfortunately man is preyed upon by microbes, which are too small to be appreciated.

T. H. White
God is love, the parson whined.
Yes, and is he also blind?

T. H. White
He (the Professor) was a failure but did his best to hid it. One of his failings was that he could barely write, except in a twelfth century hand, in Latin, with abbreviations.

T. H. White
When she (Maria) had come abreast of the little island of Mistress Masham's Repose, she began to feel piratical. Swouns and Slids, she said to herself, but you could slap her vitals if she did not careen there, and perhaps dig up some buried treasure while about it.

T. H. White
Life is too bitter already, without territories and wars and noble feuds

T. H. White
Kay was older and bigger than the Wart, so that he was bound to win in the end, but he was more nervous and imaginative. He could imagine the effect of each blow that was aimed at him, and this weakened his defense. Wart was only an infuriated hurricane.

T. H. White
Jenny, all my life I have wanted to do miracles. I have wanted to be holy. I suppose it was ambition or pride or some other unworthy thing. It was not enough for me to conquer the world—I wanted to conquer heaven too.

T. H. White
Believe me, the so-called primitive races who worshipped animals as gods were not so daft as people choose to pretend. At least they were humble. Why should not God have come to the earth as an earth-worm? There are a great many more worms than men, and they do a great deal more good.

T. H. White
God is love, the bishops tell.
Yes, I know, But love is hell.

T. H. White
But there was a time when each of us stood naked before the world, confronting life as a serious problem with which we were intimately and passionately concerned... There was a time when Free Love versus Catholic Morality was a question of as much importance to our hot bodies as if a pistol had been clapped to our heads. Further back, there were times when we wondered with all our souls, what the world was, what love was, what we were ourselves.

T. H. White
The race will find that capitalists and communists modify themselves so much during the ages that they end by being indistinguishable as democrats...

T. H. White
There is a thing called knowledge of the world, which people do not have until they are middle-aged. It is something which cannot be taught to younger people, because it is not logical and does not obey laws which are constant. It has no rules. Only, in the long years which bring women to the middle of life, a sense of balance develops…when she is beginning to hate her used body, she suddenly finds that she can do it. She can go on living…

T. H. White
Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts uncritically — to those who hardly think about us in return.

T. H. White
The Destiny of Man is to unite, not to divide. If you keep on dividing you end up as a collection of monkeys throwing nuts at each other out of separate trees.

T. H. White
Yes, that is the equality of man. Slaughter anybody who is better than you are, and then we shall be equal soon enough. All equally dead.

T. H. White
The bravest people are the ones who don't mind looking like cowards.

T. H. White
And shall the Schoolmen die?
And shall the Schoolmen die?
Five hundred men of Lilliput
Will know the reason why.

T. H. White
Wars are never fought for one reason," he said. "They are fought for dozens of reasons, in a muddle.

T. H. White
There were thousands of brown books in leather bindings, some chained to the book-shelves and others propped against each other as if they had had too much to drink and did not really trust themselves. These gave out a smell of must and solid brownness which was most secure.

T. H. White