Penelope Fitzgerald Quotes & Sayings

Opportunity, after all, is only another word for temptation. — Penelope Fitzgerald

It is interesting to note that everyone has a different take on the world, a different opinion, and given the same inputs have completely different outputs. — Penelope Fitzgerald

Courage and endurance are useless if they are never tested. — Penelope Fitzgerald

He was not trained in conservation - he was, after all, no more than an archaeologist - a digger! — Penelope Fitzgerald

Helping other people is a drug so dangerous that there is no cure short of total abstention. — Penelope Fitzgerald

Annie - although she also knew that those who don't speak have to pay it off in thinking - was resolved on silence. Whatever happened, and after all she was obliged to see Mr brooks two or three times every day, though she by no means looked forward to it, feeling herself more truly alive when she could picture him steadily without seeing him - whatever happened, he needn't know how daft she was. — Penelope Fitzgerald

More than that, I believe that the grass is green because green is restful to the human eye, that the sky is blue to give us an idea of the infinite. And that blood is red so that murder will be more easily detected and criminals will be brought to justice. Yes, and I believe that I shall live forever, but I shall live without reason. — Penelope Fitzgerald

Algebra, like laudanum, deadens pain, Fritz wrote. — Penelope Fitzgerald

You can borrow my Blackbird, if you like,' said Ben. This was his new fountain pen, which troubled him. It was guaranteed not to leak but writers and schoolchildren knew better. Ben wished to be relieved of the responsibility of the Blackbird, without losing his own dignity. — Penelope Fitzgerald

She was in love, as she quite saw, with a middle - aged man who said the same thing to all the girls, who had been a prince for an evening which he'd most likely forgotten already, who had given her a ring with a redcurrant in it and who cared, to the exclusion of all else, for his work. — Penelope Fitzgerald

Have remained true to my deepest convictions, I mean to the courage of those who are born to be defeated, the weaknesses of the strong, and the tragedy of misunderstandings and missed opportunities, which I have done my best to — Penelope Fitzgerald

An unjust punishment is never forgotten. — Penelope Fitzgerald

I have remained true to my deepest convictions. I mean the courage of those who are born to be defeated, the weaknesses of the strong, and the tragedy of misunderstandings and missed opportunities, which I have done my best to treat as comedy - for otherwise how can we manage to bear it? — Penelope Fitzgerald

That was what he wanted to tell his audience at Cambridge. He divided classical satirists into two classes - fierce men starving in garrets, and renouncing popularity and circulation to dwell in tubs, and calm good-livers "who tell amusingly the kind of truth that no one has ever denied." But for the present century the right spirit, he believed, was self-satire, the ability to see humor in the constant small defeats of life, and "the power to be startled by nothing, however extravagant." The subject, in the end, turned out to be more relevant than it had seemed, as anyone could have told who had heard Eddie and Wilfred laughing together. — Penelope Fitzgerald

Opening the shop gave her, every morning, the same feeling of promise and opportunity. The books stood as neatly ranged as Gipping's vegetables, ready for all comers. — Penelope Fitzgerald

What's to become of us? We can't go on like this."
"Yes, we can go on like this," said Cesare. "We can go on exactly like this for the rest of our lives. — Penelope Fitzgerald

Morality is seldom a safe guide for human conduct. — Penelope Fitzgerald

After all, these people were born for joy, he thought. — Penelope Fitzgerald

Duty is what no-one else will do at the moment. — Penelope Fitzgerald

There isn't one kind of happiness, there's all kinds. Decision is torment for anyone with imagination. When you decide, you multiply the things you might have done and now never can. — Penelope Fitzgerald

Behind their dark glass, the mad own nothing. — Penelope Fitzgerald

The professor urged upon Fred that to base one's calculations on unobservables - such as God, such as the soul, such as the atom, such as the elementary particle - was nothing more than a comforting weakness. 'I don't deny that all human beings need comfort. But scientists should not indulge themselves on quite this scale. — Penelope Fitzgerald

She had a kind heart, though that is not of much use when it comes to the matter of self-preservation. — Penelope Fitzgerald

How could the wind be so strong, so far inland, that cyclists
coming into the town in the late afternoon looked more like
sailors in peril? This was on the way into Cambridge, up Mill
Road past the cemetery and the workhouse. On the open
ground to the left the willow-trees had been blown, driven
and cracked until their branches gave way and lay about the
drenched grass, jerking convulsively and trailing cataracts of
twigs. The cows had gone mad, tossing up the silvery weeping
leaves which were suddenly, quite contrary to all their exper-
ience, everywhere within reach. Their horns were festooned
with willow boughs. Not being able to see properly, they
tripped and fell. Two or three of them were wallowing on
their backs, idiotically, exhibiting vast pale bellies intended by
nature to be always hidden. They were still munching. A scene
of disorder, tree-tops on the earth, legs in the air, in a university
city devoted to logic and reason. — Penelope Fitzgerald

It's very good for an idea to be commonplace. The important thing is that a new idea should develop out of what is already there so that it soon becomes an old acquaintance. Old acquaintances aren't by any means always welcome, but at least one can't be mistaken as to who or what they are. — Penelope Fitzgerald

A word of advice. If, as a young man, student, you are tormented by a desire for women, it is best to get out into the fresh air as much as possible. — Penelope Fitzgerald

The body, then, has a mind of its own. It must follow, then, that the Mind has a body of its own, even if it's like nothing that we can see around us, or have ever seen. — Penelope Fitzgerald

Open the doors, the Russians say, here comes trouble. On — Penelope Fitzgerald

Courage and endurance are useless of they are never tested. — Penelope Fitzgerald

Experiences aren't given to us to be 'got over,' otherwise they would hardly be experiences. — Penelope Fitzgerald

But we weren't meant to live alone,' said Frank.
'Life makes its own corrections. — Penelope Fitzgerald

But time given to wishing for what can't be is not only spent, but wasted, and for all that we waste we shall be accountable. — Penelope Fitzgerald

I believe that people should write biographies only about people they love, or understand, or both. Novels, on the other hand, are often better if they're about people the writer doesn't like very much. — Penelope Fitzgerald

In 1959 Florence Green occasionally passed a night when she was not absolutely sure whether she had slept or not. This was because of her worries as to whether to purchase a small property, the Old House, with its own warehouse on the foreshore, and to open the only bookshop in Hardborough. The uncertainty probably kept her awake. She had once seen a heron flying across the estuary and trying, while it was on the wing, to swallow an eel which it had caught. The eel, in turn, was struggling to escape from the gullet of the heron and appeared a quarter, a half, or occasionally three-quarters of the way out. The indecision expressed by both creatures was pitiable. They had taken on too much. Florence felt that if she hadn't slept at all - and people often say this when they mean nothing of the kind - she must have been kept awake by thinking of the heron. — Penelope Fitzgerald

If they don't depend on true evidence, scientists are no better than gossips. — Penelope Fitzgerald

Florence had noticed one or two eccentricities in herself lately, which might be the result of hard work, or of age, or of living alone. When the letters came, for example, she often found herself wasting time in looking at the postmarks and wondering whoever they could be from, instead of opening them in a sensible manner and finding out at once. — Penelope Fitzgerald

On the whole, I think you should write biographies of those you admire and respect, and novels about human beings who you think are sadly mistaken. — Penelope Fitzgerald

Tilda cared nothing for the future, and had, as a result, a great capacity for happiness. — Penelope Fitzgerald

What seemed delicacy in him was usually a way of avoiding trouble; what seemed like sympathy was the instinct to prevent trouble before it started. It was hard to see what growing older would mean to such a person. His emotions, from lack of exercise, had disappeared almost altogether. Adaptability and curiosity, he had found, did just as well. — Penelope Fitzgerald

Surely you have to succeed, if you give everything you have.'
'I don't see why. Everyone has to give everything they have eventually. They have to die. Dying can't be called a success. — Penelope Fitzgerald

You have come to Cambridge to study the interdependence of matter and energy. Please remember that energy and matter are in no way something distinct from yourselves. Remember, too, that scientists are not dispassionate. Your judgement and your ability to do good work will be in part dependent on your digestion, your prejudices and above all, your emotional life. You must face the fact that if another human being, whose welfare means considerably more to you than your own, behaves in a very different way from anything you had expected, then your efficiency may be impaired. When the heart is breaking, it is nothing but an absurd illusion to think you can taste the blood. Still I repeat, your efficiency may be impaired. — Penelope Fitzgerald

If there's even one person who might be hurt by a decision, you should never make it. — Penelope Fitzgerald

Human beings interested her so much that it must always be an advantage to meet another one. — Penelope Fitzgerald