Frank Harris Quotes & Sayings

There are special reasons, too, why I should handle this story. Oscar Wilde was a friend of mine for many years: I could not help prizing him to the very end: he was always to me a charming, soul-animating influence. He was dreadfully punished by men utterly his inferiors: ruined, outlawed, persecuted till Death itself came as a deliverance. — Frank Harris

[Referring to the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde] ... Will civilization never reach humane ideals? Will men always punish most severely the sins they do not understand and which hold forth for them no temptation? Did Jesus suffer in vain? — Frank Harris

Memoirs are a well-known form of fiction. — Frank Harris

The Christian churches were offered two things: the spirit of Jesus and the idiotic morality of Paul, and they rejected the higher inspiration ... Following Paul, we have turned the goodness of love into a fiend and degraded the crowning impulse of our being into a capital sin. — Frank Harris

Such actions are beyond praise: it is the perfume of such sweet and noble human sympathy that makes this wild beasts' cage a world habitable for men. — Frank Harris

There is a destiny that shapes our ends rough, hew them as we will. — Frank Harris

( ... ) always regretted that good memory often prevents us from thinking for ourselves. — Frank Harris

I am, really, a great writer; my only difficulty is in finding great readers. — Frank Harris

I will, however, establish that success in love, as in all other aspects of life, belongs, as a rule, to the persistent and fiber man. Chaucer had reason to make the Old Bath confess: 'The truth is, more or less, we always succumb to attention and perseverance'. — Frank Harris

All the faults of the age come from Christianity and journalism. Christianity, of course, but why journalism? — Frank Harris

What will happen to those who stone the prophets and persecute the masters? His fate is written in flaming letters on each page of the history. — Frank Harris

Strong people are made by opposition like kites that go up against the wind. — Frank Harris

( ... ) the easiest to conquer were also more worthy of it, because women have better intuition than men for the love affinity. — Frank Harris

For the first time, vague doubts assaulted me, the shattering suspicion that for all pleasure and joy in life we had to pay ... I repel fear. If I had to pay I would pay, after all, the memory of ecstasy while pungisse its pain could never be erased. — Frank Harris

Memory is the mother of the muses, prototype Artist. As a rule picks and highlights what is important, omitting what is accidental or trivial. Occasionally, however, is mistaken as all the other artists. Nevertheless it is what I take as a guide page. — Frank Harris

Sex is the gateway to life. — Frank Harris

The truth is that the fever of desire in youth is fleeting disease that intimacy promptly cure. — Frank Harris