Phyllis Bottome Quotes & Sayings

We cannot alter facts, but we can alter our ways of looking at them. — Phyllis Bottome

Things that happen, however painful they are at the time, do not matter very much for long. Only how we behave to them matters. — Phyllis Bottome

I wonder how often not the intention but the desire springs up in a doctor's mind: 'Can I let this human being out of the trap of Life? — Phyllis Bottome

It is better in the long run to be cheated than to cheat. I have learned that there is no middle way. — Phyllis Bottome

To everything there is an end - except fear. — Phyllis Bottome

To see a shadow and think it is a tree that is a pity; but to see a tree and to think it a shadow can be fatal. — Phyllis Bottome

It is very a dangerous thing to have an idea that you will not practice. — Phyllis Bottome

Not being liked has a certain virtue about it, if the reason for the dislike does not lie in yourself! — Phyllis Bottome

There are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties, or you alter yourself to meet them. — Phyllis Bottome

The ears of the hunted grow even keener than a hunter's. — Phyllis Bottome

There is no thermometer for wants! — Phyllis Bottome

If you listen long enough - or is it deep enough? - the silence of a lover can speak plainer than any words! Only you must know how to listen. Pain must have taught you how. — Phyllis Bottome

To be in the right is often an expensive business. — Phyllis Bottome

With courage a human being is safe enough. And without it - he is never for one instant safe! — Phyllis Bottome

Our responsibility to ourselves comes first
because in a sense what one is oneself is the responsibility that one has for others! — Phyllis Bottome

Every hen thinks she has laid the best egg! Can we not all believe as we choose? But the choice of others - what is that to us? Let them alone ... — Phyllis Bottome

Neither saints nor angels have ever increased my faith in this enigma Life; but what are called 'common men and women' have increased it. — Phyllis Bottome

It must depend as much upon the patient's willingness to be cured, as upon the physician's skill in curing. There is neither force not magic in psychiatry. — Phyllis Bottome

To be a Jew is to belong to an old harmless race that has lived in every country in the world; and that has enriched every country it has lived in.
"It is to be strong with a strength that has outlived persecutions. It is to be wise against ignorance, honest against piracy, harmless against evil, industrious against idleness, kind against cruelty! It is to belong to a race that has given Europe its religion; its moral law; and much of its science-perhaps even more of its genius-in art, literature and music.
"This is to be a Jew; and you know now what is required of you! You have no country but the world; and you inherit nothing but wisdom and brotherhood. I do not say there are no bad Jews-userers; cowards; corrupt and unjust persons-but such people are also to be found among Christians. I only say to you this is to be a good Jew. Every Jew has this aim brought before him in his youth. He refuses it at his peril; and at his peril he accepts it. — Phyllis Bottome

When you know a person particularly well, you cannot escape their ruffled feelings. — Phyllis Bottome

It's a good thing to learn early that other people's opinions do not matter, unless they happen to be true. — Phyllis Bottome

It is you men who make war! ... We, who have children, would never make it! Why should a woman be broken up in pain, to give her child life, only to see him carried away from her, to make food for guns? — Phyllis Bottome

That a Jew is despised or persecuted is bad for him, of course-but far worse for the Christian who does it-for although persecuted he can remain a good Jew-whereas no Christian who persecutes can possibly remain-if he ever was one-a good Christian. — Phyllis Bottome

If a writer is true to his characters they will give him his plot. Observations must play second fiddle to integrity. — Phyllis Bottome

A blossom must break the sheath it has been sheltered by. — Phyllis Bottome

What are so mysterious as the eyes of a child? — Phyllis Bottome

Death ... is not a great affair! Think - it happens once only - to each of us - as birth does. What do you know about being born? that - and no more - will you know about the act of death. — Phyllis Bottome

Neither situations nor people can be altered by the interference of an outsider. If they are to be altered, that alteration must come from within. — Phyllis Bottome

If one has one cow, it is always better not to be too familiar with those who have seven. — Phyllis Bottome

To be a Jew is to be strong with a strength that has outlived persecutions. It is to be wise against ignorance, honest against piracy, harmless against evil, kind against cruelty — Phyllis Bottome

Human beings don't show, any more than cities at dusk, their real necessities! And yet if you looked
past the circle of outside lights, through the street walls still standing
into the want and emptiness within! — Phyllis Bottome

Knowledge cannot be changed, but the use to which it may be put can very easily be changed. — Phyllis Bottome

Some of us cling to our curses if we haven't anything better to cling to! — Phyllis Bottome

It is the possibilities which are the most terrible things in life. — Phyllis Bottome

When a reserved person once begins to talk, nothing can stop him; and he does not want to have to listen, until he has quite finished his unfamiliar exertion. — Phyllis Bottome

Truth is its own defense. — Phyllis Bottome

Luck enters into every contingency. You are a fool if you forget it
and a greater fool if you count upon it. — Phyllis Bottome

A woman who has been a nun is never anything else. — Phyllis Bottome

Poets, when they write of love, give themselves and everyone else away! — Phyllis Bottome

A desire that has never been fulfilled is considerably less acute than one that has been fulfilled and then checked at the source. — Phyllis Bottome

What most people tell you a confidence for is to get something off their chest which hasn't really been on it. They don't necessarily want to hide the truth from you, but they're out to hide it from themselves — Phyllis Bottome

All persecution is a sign of fear; for if we did not fear the power of an opinion different from our own, we should not mind others holding it. — Phyllis Bottome

Jane had that happy disposition which would like to imagine that every one really wishes the well-being of his neighbour and struggles, though sometimes rather disastrously, to help him towards it. — Phyllis Bottome

Curses are children of hate; they belong to the wrong family! Prayers are better than curses! — Phyllis Bottome

Can life be made undignified by any act of man? — Phyllis Bottome

Morale is not a single instinct. It has many ingredients. A sense of personal responsibility, the natural courage of an individual, the amount of his acquired self-discipline
and above all his interest in others
these together make up the spirit of morale. — Phyllis Bottome

People who talk of new lives believe there will be no new troubles. — Phyllis Bottome

In my early life, and probably even today, it is not sufficiently understood that a child's education should include at least a rudimentary grasp of religion, sex, and money. Without a basic knowledge of these three primary facts in a normal human being's life
subjects which stir the emotions, create events and opportunities, and if they do not wholly decide must greatly influence an individual's personality
no human being's education can have a safe foundation. — Phyllis Bottome

The unfortunate thing about worldliness is that its rewards are rather less than its appetites. — Phyllis Bottome

She believed in letting children have a certain amount of rope, and only intervened at the last moment, in order to prevent their hanging themselves by it. — Phyllis Bottome

All daughters, even when most aggravated by their mothers, have a secret respect for them. They believe perhaps that they can do everything better than their mothers can, and many things they can do better, but they have not yet lived long enough to be sure how successfully they will meet the major emergencies of life, which lie, sometimes quite creditably, behind their mothers. — Phyllis Bottome

Marriage! ... Why, it is like living in a thimble with a hippopotamus! — Phyllis Bottome

When lightning strikes, the mouse is sometimes burned with the farm. — Phyllis Bottome

The only creative power I know is that of what might roughly be called 'love'; not of course a sentimental love: a far more impersonal and less individual emotion. I sometimes think that migratory birds may have it for each other. They fly in the same direction, and have never been seen to interfere with each other's flights. — Phyllis Bottome

We do good by ourselves, but we seldom do wrong alone. — Phyllis Bottome

There is nothing final about a mistake, except its being taken as final. — Phyllis Bottome

Time indeed has very little to do with living except at its beginning or near its end. — Phyllis Bottome

Anger is like mild, it should not be kept too long. — Phyllis Bottome

I am never at picnics. The ground was not meant to be sat upon in its raw state, I feel sure, and I prefer my food without either caterpillars or drafts! — Phyllis Bottome

Taboos on the human heart are more dangerous than any risk we run by using our emotions. Sensation is the life of man; it is his actual energy. To suppress it is to lose creative power! — Phyllis Bottome

Nobody can afford to appear more pleasant than they really are! — Phyllis Bottome

Personally, I think it's a good way to let a child start right in with the laws of Nature before he's old enough to be surprised at them. — Phyllis Bottome

One pets what one degrades; and one has to support what one has enfeebled — Phyllis Bottome

Death deceives relations often, and doctors sometimes, but the patient - never. — Phyllis Bottome

The two best subjects for conversation are talking shop and making love. — Phyllis Bottome

Hurt vanity is one of the cruelest of mortal wounds. — Phyllis Bottome

Life was a series of messes, and one spent one's time cleaning them up; if one had any heart at all one also gave a part of one's time to cleaning up those of other people. — Phyllis Bottome

This is the real tragedy of mankind, that until now the spirit of man has not been able to free itself, even along the path of its own development, from the tentacles of self-deception. — Phyllis Bottome

Truth is no man's slave - but lies - what magnificent servants they make ... — Phyllis Bottome

A man whose every exertion is bent upon showing up the flaws in his wife's character must be at least partially responsible for some of them. — Phyllis Bottome

Most people are dead, and none of them seem to mind it. One hears a great many complaints about life, doesn't one? And there are people I know who would certainly grumble
however dead they were
if there were anything to grumble at. — Phyllis Bottome

If money had been the way to save the world, Christ himself would have been rich. — Phyllis Bottome

No emergency excuses you from exercising tolerance. — Phyllis Bottome

A red-hot belief in eternal glory is probably the best antidote to human panic that there is. — Phyllis Bottome

Curiosity is the only thing that really carries through time, isn't it? The creative curiosity, I mean, which fights its way into expression? — Phyllis Bottome

When we refuse to accept our limitations, Nature, who is a stern realist, pays us out. — Phyllis Bottome

Where there is laughter there is always more health than sickness. — Phyllis Bottome

Lots of men hate women now-a-days ... It was a man-made world, and now we're asking to go shares in the making. — Phyllis Bottome

A refugee is as helpless as a new born child - but not so appealing! Besides, a new born child has no memories! — Phyllis Bottome

Truth, though it has many disadvantages, is at least changeless. You can always find it where you left it. — Phyllis Bottome

Artists are exposed to great temptations: their eyes see paradise before their souls have reached it, and that is a great danger. — Phyllis Bottome

Love comes into your being like a tidal wave ... sometimes it withdraws like a wave, till there isn't such a thing as a pool left, and every bit of your heart is as dry as seaweed beyond the wave's reach. — Phyllis Bottome