Ethel Lilian Voynich Quotes & Sayings

Do you think you didn't hurt the man you killed? — Ethel Lilian Voynich

All mechanical habits are bad and slavish, and this one is ferocious as well. Of course, if you look upon the work of the revolutionist as the mere wresting of certain definite concessions from the government, then the secret sect and the knife must seem to you the best weapons, for there is nothing else which all governments so dread. But if you think, as I do, that to force the government's hand is not an end in itself, but only a means to an end, and that what we really need to reform is the relation between man and man, then you must go differently to work. Accustoming ignorant people to the sight of blood is not the way to raise the value they put on human life. — Ethel Lilian Voynich

There is no case which calls for injustice; and to condemn a civilian by the judgment of a secret military tribunal is both unjust and illegal. — Ethel Lilian Voynich

We always understood each other without many words, even when we were little things. — Ethel Lilian Voynich

It matters just as much what to do, whether people hate you or love you — Ethel Lilian Voynich

A stone in the path may have the best intentions, but it must be kicked out of the path, for all that. — Ethel Lilian Voynich

I quite agree with you that it is detestably malicious. But the worst thing about it is that it's all true. — Ethel Lilian Voynich

The disease itself is what is called a religious attitude of mind. — Ethel Lilian Voynich

The bad principle is that any man should hold over another the power to bind and loose. It's a false relationship to stand in towards one's fellows — Ethel Lilian Voynich

As a literary composition, it is utterly worthless, and could be admired only by persons who know nothing about literature. As for its giving offence, that is the very thing I intended it to do. — Ethel Lilian Voynich

Remember what your own Shelley says: 'The past is Death's, the future is thine own.' Take it, while it is still yours, and fix your mind, not on what you may have done long ago to hurt, but on what you can do now to help. — Ethel Lilian Voynich

I dare say you will think it an absurd prejudice; but a human body, to me, is a sacred thing; I don't like to see it treated irreverently and made hideous. — Ethel Lilian Voynich

If you are going to say a thing the substance of which is a big pill for your readers to swallow, there is no use in frightening them at the beginning by the form. — Ethel Lilian Voynich

Most of us are degraded in one way or another. — Ethel Lilian Voynich

The longer a thing is to take doing, the more reason to begin at once — Ethel Lilian Voynich

They kill me because they are afraid of me; and what more can any man's heart desire? — Ethel Lilian Voynich

Would you have me wait till my grave opens of itself to swallow me up? — Ethel Lilian Voynich

We are all fit for better things than we ever do — Ethel Lilian Voynich

I don't know what he means, but there's something not clean about a man who sneers at everything. — Ethel Lilian Voynich

The training of children is such a serous thing, and it means so much to them to be surrounded from the very beginning with good influences, that I should have thought the holier a man's vocation and the purer his life, the more fit he is to be a father — Ethel Lilian Voynich

I have only one offering to give, a broken heart. — Ethel Lilian Voynich

If you have found the way of sacrifice, the way that leads to peace; if you have joined with loving comrades to bring deliverance to them that weep and mourn in secret; then see to it that your soul be free from envy and passion and your heart as an altar where the sacred fire burns eternally. — Ethel Lilian Voynich

I am rather observant, and have a habit of putting things together. I tell you that so that you may be careful when you don't want me to know a thing. — Ethel Lilian Voynich

He says things which need saying and which none of us have had the courage to say. This passage, where he compares Italy to a tipsy man weeping with tenderness on the neck of the thief who is picking his pocket, is splendidly written. — Ethel Lilian Voynich

In this month he had been too happy to sin much — Ethel Lilian Voynich

The hand of the Lord is heavy. — Ethel Lilian Voynich