Quotes & Sayings About Gertrude

Benny sat on the floor next to Mrs. Collins and said, "Would you come and visit us sometime? I'd like to show you our boxcar. You know we ran away once, too."
Mrs. Collins smiled. "Benny, I would love to visit you and to hear about your adventures."
"We've had lots of them," Violet said. "But you know, I think this one was the best."

The Mystery of the Singing Ghost — Gertrude Chandler Warner

mountain is a general store. The men give you poles and a lunch and directions. They always — Gertrude Chandler Warner

I have fallen a hopeless victim to the Turk; he is the most charming of mortals ... — Gertrude Bell

Anyone who marries three girls from St Louis hasn't learned much. — Gertrude Stein

Considering how dangerous everything is, nothing is really very frightening. — Gertrude Stein

Human beings are interested in two things. They are interested in the reality and interested in telling about it. — Gertrude Stein

For order represents our fear and nervousness. We create ordered interiors as a protest over the passing of things, to define our mortal lives against the void of time. — Gertrude Diamant

Books are too heterogeneous an interest to furnish a vital one in life, a reason for being alive. — Gertrude Atherton

Wake a question. Eat an instant, answer — Gertrude Stein

The Nobel Prize is fine, but the drugs I've developed are rewards in themselves. — Gertrude B. Elion

The kind of loving women and men have in them and the ways it comes out from them makes for them the bottom nature in them, gives to them their kind of thinking, makes the character they have all their living in them, makes them then their kind of women and men and there are always many millions made of each kind of them. — Gertrude Stein

Suppose no one asked a question.
What would the answer be? — Gertrude Stein

I often think how celebrated I am. / It is difficult not to think how celebrated I am. / And if I think how celebrated I am / They know who know that I am new / That is I knew I know how celebrated I am / And after all it astonishes even me. — Gertrude Stein

Superstition is believing that something means anything and that anything means something and that each thing means a particular thing and will mean a particular thing is coming. Oh yes it does. — Gertrude Stein

Some out of their own virtue make a god who sometimes later is a nuisance to them, a terror perhaps to them, a difficult thing to be forgetting. — Gertrude Stein

In garden arrangement, as in all other kinds of decorative work, one has not only to acquire a knowledge of what to do, but also to gain some wisdom in perceiving what it is well to let alone. — Gertrude Jekyll

Of course one can't eat in a civilized fashion while touring in theatres. But I still manage to get my three meals a day. I find that is sufficient for training. — Gertrude Ederle

The whole duty of man consists in being reasonable and just I am reasonable because I know the difference between understanding and not understanding and I am just because I have no
opinion about things I don't understand. — Gertrude Stein

It took the Metropolitan Museum of Art nearly 50 years to wake up to Pablo Picasso. It didn't own one of his paintings until 1946, when Gertrude Stein bequeathed that indomitable quasi-Cubistic picture of herself - a portrait of the writer as a sumo Buddha - to the Met, principally because she disliked the Museum of Modern Art. — Jerry Saltz

F. Scott Fitzgerald is the first of the last generation. — Gertrude Stein

Nature is not natural and that is natural enough. — Gertrude Stein

No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who also are creating their own time refuse to accept. — Gertrude Stein

A very important thing is not to make up your mind that you are any one thing. — Gertrude Stein

It was a strange winter and nothing and everything happened. — Gertrude Stein

The detailed, scientifically acceptable studies of Dr. Joseph B. Rhine at Duke University, of Dr. Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia, Department of Psychiatry, of Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler at the College of the City of New York, and of many other serious researchers prove that this can be done. — Brian L. Weiss

How I wish I were able to say what I think ... — Gertrude Stein

I write for myself and strangers. The strangers, dear Readers, are an afterthought. — Gertrude Stein

Just before she died she asked, What is the answer? No answer came. She laughed and said, In that case, what is the question? Then she died. — Gertrude Stein

A little artist has all the tragic unhappiness and the sorrows of a great artist and he is not a great artist. — Gertrude Stein

It is a difficult thing to like anybody else's ideas of being funny. — Gertrude Stein

A little superstition is a good thing to keep in one's bag of precautions. — Gertrude Atherton

A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables. — Gertrude Stein

There is always in February some one day, at least, when one smells the yet distant, but surely coming, summer. — Gertrude Jekyll

I do not envy the owners of very large gardens. The garden should fit its owner or his or her tastes, just as one's clothes do; it should be neither too large nor too small, but just comfortable. — Gertrude Jekyll

Is money money or isn't money money. Everybody who earns
it and spends it every day in order to live knows
that money is money, anybody who votes it to be
gathered in as taxes knows money is not money. That
is what makes everybody go crazy ... When you earn
money and spend money every day anybody can know the
difference between a million and three. But when you
vote money away there really is not any difference
between a million and three. — Gertrude Stein

There is nothing so carking as the pangs of unsatisfied curiosity. — Gertrude Atherton

Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone. — Gertrude Stein

Supposing everyone lived at one time what would they say. They would observe that stringing string beans is universal. — Gertrude Stein

It is always a mistake to be plain-spoken. — Gertrude Stein

What can we learn from women like Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday that we may not be able to learn from Ida B. Wells, Anna Julia Cooper, and Mary Church Terrell? If we were beginning to appreciate the blasphemies of fictionalized blues women - especially their outrageous politics of sexuality - and the knowledge that might be gleaned from their lives about the possibilities of transforming gender relations within black communities, perhaps we also could benefit from a look at the artistic contributions of the original blues women. — Angela Y. Davis

Action and reaction are equal and opposite. — Gertrude Stein

In tender hearted natures, those that mostly never feel strong passion, suffering often comes to make them harder. When these do not know in themselves what it is to suffer, suffering is then very awful to them and they badly want to help everyone who has to suffer, and they have a deep reverence for anybody who knows really how to always suffer. But when it comes to them to really suffer, they soon begin to lose their fear and tenderness and wonder. Why it isn't so very much to suffer, when even I can bear to do it. It isn't very pleasant to be having all the time, to stand it, but they are not so much wiser after all, all the others just because they know too how to bear it. — Gertrude Stein

The only thing that is different from one time to another is what is seen and what is seen depends upon how everybody is doing everything. — Gertrude Stein

In this case," said Randall unpleasantly, "it affords me purer gratification to dwell upon the thought of my dear Aunt Gertrude duped and betrayed."
"Your aunt doesn't suffer throught it!"
"What a pity!" said Randall. — Georgette Heyer

Is the professor who insists we read Ernest Hemingway again instead of Gertrude Stein "obsessing"? Because although I did a BA in English, an MFA in Poetry, and a year's worth of a PhD, Stein was an author I had to discover on my own. She wasn't on the syllabus anywhere in all that time. — Laura Mullen

The only real rival of love is Art, for that in itself is a deep personal passion, its function an act of creation, fed by some mysterious perversion of sex, and demanding all the imagination's activities. — Gertrude Atherton

The two greatest mannequins of the century were Gertrude Stein and Edith Sitwell - unquestionably. You just couldn't take a bad picture of those two old girls — Diana Vreeland

For the best building and planting ... the architect and gardener must have some knowledge of each other's business, and each must regard with feelings of kindly reverence the unknown domains of the other's higher knowledge. — Gertrude Jekyll

There is art and there is official art, there always has been and there always will be. — Gertrude Stein

Everybody said the same thing over and over again with infinite variations but over and over again until finally if you listened with great intensity you could hear it rise and fall and tell all that there was inside them, not so much by the actual words they said or the thoughts they had but the movement of their thoughts and words endlessly the same and endlessly different. — Gertrude Stein

There never will be anything more interesting than that American Civil War. — Gertrude Stein

Authors are far closer to the truths enfolded in mystery than ordinary people, because of that very audacity of imagination which irritates their plodding critics. As only those who dare to make mistakes succeed greatly, only those who shake free the wings of their imagination brush, once in a way, the secrets of the great pale world. If such writers go wrong, it is not for the mere brains to tell them so — Gertrude Atherton

Eating and sleeping are not like loving and breathing. Washing is not like eating and sleeping. Believing is like breathing and loving. Religion can be believing, it can be like breathing, it can be like loving, it can be like eating or sleeping, it can be like washing, it can be something to fill up a place when someone has lost out of them a piece that it was not natural for them to have in them. — Gertrude Stein

[On Ezra Pound:] A village explainer, excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not. — Gertrude Stein

At any moment when you are you, you are you without the memory of yourself because if you remember yourself while you are you, you are not for the purposes of creating you. — Gertrude Stein

The reason why all of us naturally began to live in France is because France has scientific methods, machines and electricity, but does not really believe that these things have anything to do with the real business of living. — Gertrude Stein

A creator is so completely contemporary that he has the appearance of being ahead of his generation. — Gertrude Stein

The painter does not conceive himself as existing in himself, he conceives himself as a reflection of the objects he has put into his pictures and he lives in the reflections of his pictures, a writer, a serious writer, conceives himself as existing by and in himself, he does not at all live in the reflection of his books, to write he must first of all exist in himself, but for a painter to be able to paint, the painting must first of all be done. — Gertrude Stein

The difference between saints, forget-me-nots, and mountains, have to, have to, have to at a time. — Gertrude Stein

In a notable family called Stein
There were Gertrude, and Ep, and then Ein.
Gert's writing was hazy,
Ep's statues were crazy,
And nobody understood Ein. — Bennett Cerf

You have to know what you want to get it. — Gertrude Stein

In the early years of the Roaring Twenties, American women not only won the right to vote but they also earned headlines along side their male counterparts during the Golden Age of American sports. Michael Bohn shares an engaging story of how two sports heroines, tennis player Helen Wills and swimmer Gertrude Ederle, helped embolden women to seek self-fulfillment by challenging the status quo. — Donna De Varona

What is the answer?
[ I [Alice B Toklas] was silent ]
In that case, what is the question? — Gertrude Stein

They do quote me, that means that my words and my sentences get under their skins although they do no know it. — Gertrude Stein

A bag which was left and not only taken but turned away was not found. The place was shown to be very like the last time. A piece was not exchanged, not a bit of it, a piece was left over. The rest was mismanaged. — Gertrude Stein

When you get there, there isn't any there there. — Gertrude Stein

I never change.
MRS. CHEVELEY: (elevating her eyebrows) Then life has taught you nothing?
LADY CHILTERN: It has taught me that a person who has once been guilty of a dishonest and dishonorable action may be guilty of it a second time, and should be shunned.
MRS. CHEVELEY: Whould that rule apply to everyone?
LADY CHILTERN: Yes, to everyone, without exception.
MRS. CHEVELEY: Then I am sorry for you, Gertrude, very sorry for you. — Oscar Wilde

To accomplish artistic work, of any individual worth, nature must be seen through the medium of the artist's intellectual emotions. — Gertrude Kasebier

Let me repeat what history teaches. History teaches. — Gertrude Stein

Nobody knows what I am trying to do but I do and I know when I succeed. — Gertrude Stein

There ain't no answer. There ain't going to be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer. (Gertrude Stein: In Words and Pictures) — Gertrude Stein

It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business. — Gertrude Stein

The head-lines which do not head anything they simply replace something but they do not make anything. — Gertrude Stein

It always did bother me that the American public were more interested in me than in my work. And after all there is no sense in it because if it were not for my work they would not be interested in me so why should they not be more interested in my work than in me. That is one of the things one has to worry about in America. — Gertrude Stein

When is there some discharge when. There never is. — Gertrude Stein

Sentences are made wonderfully one at a time. Who makes them. Nobody can make them because nobody can what ever they do see.
All this makes sentences so clear I know how I like them.
What is a sentence mostly what is a sentence. With them a sentence is with us about us all about us we will be willing with what a sentence is. A sentence is that they cannot be carefully there is a doubt about it.
The great question is can you think a sentence. What is a sentence. He thought a sentence. Who calls him to come which he did.
... What is a sentence. A sentence is a duplicate. An exact duplicate is depreciated. Why is a duplicated sentence not depreciated. Because it is a witness. No witnesses are without value. — Gertrude Stein

It is natural not to care about a sister certainly not when she is four years older and grinds her teeth at night. — Gertrude Stein

My father emigrated from Lithuania to the United States at the age of 12. He received his higher education in New York City and graduated in 1914 from the New York University School of Dentistry. My mother came at the age of 14 from a part of Russia which, after the war, became Poland; she was only 19 when she was married to my father. — Gertrude B. Elion

There is no point in being realistic about here and now, no use at all not any, and so it is not the nineteenth but the twentieth century, there is no realism now, life is not real it is not earnest, it is strange which is an entirely different matter. — Gertrude Stein

I was a child with an insatiable thirst for knowledge and remember enjoying all of my courses almost equally. When it came time at the end of my high school career to choose a major in which to specialize, I was in a quandary. — Gertrude B. Elion

Are you from Hapsburg?"
He seemed to think about it for a second or two, then gave a small nod.
"I thought I recognized the accent."
The scowl was back full force. "You are an expert on accents?" He managed to sound sarcastic.
"No. My Uncle Otto was from Hapsburg."
He blinked again, and the scowl wilted around the edges. "You are not German." He sounded very sure.
"My father's family is; from Baden-Baden on the edge of the Black Forest but Uncle Otto was from Hamburg.
"You said only your uncle had the accent."
"By the time I came along, most of the family, except for my grandmother, had been in this country so long there was no accent, but Uncle Otto never lost his."
"He's dead now." Olaf made it half question, half statement.
I nodded.
"How did he die?"
"Grandma Blake says Aunt Gertrude nagged him to death."
His lips twitched. "Women are tyrants if a man allows it." His voice was a touch softer now. — Laurell K. Hamilton

In America, everybody is, but some are more than others. — Gertrude Stein

War is never fatal but always lost. Always lost. — Gertrude Stein

Everything is the same except composition and as the composition is different and always going to be different everything is not the same. So then I as a contemporary creating the composition in the beginning was groping toward a continuous present, a using everything a beginning again and again and then everything being alike then everything very simply everything was naturally simply different and so I as a contemporary was creating everything being alike was creating everything naturally being naturally simply different, everything being alike. This then was the period that brings me to the period of the beginning of 1914. Everything being alike everything naturally would be simply different and war came and everything being alike and everything being simply different brings everything being simply different brings it to romanticism. — Gertrude Stein

Absolute liberty ... tends to corrupt absolutely. — Gertrude Himmelfarb

What good are roots if you can't take them with you — Gertrude Stein

The amusements of life, he argued, should be accepted with the same philosophy as its ills. ("The Striding Place") — Gertrude Atherton

Replacing a casual aquaintance with an ordinary daughter does not make a son. — Gertrude Stein

It is funny about money. And it is funny about identity. You are you because your little dog knows you, but when your public knows you and does not want to pay for you and when your public knows you and does want to pay for you, you are not the same you. — Gertrude Stein

More than half a century has passed, and yet each spring, when I wander into the primrose wood, I see the pale yellow blooms and smell their sweetest scent - for a moment I am seven years old again and wandering in that fragrant wood. — Gertrude Jekyll

When I said.
A rose is a rose is a rose.
And then later made that into a ring I made poetry and what
did I do I caressed completely caressed and addressed
a noun. — Gertrude Stein

Oh, I eat whatever I want whenever I want it. — Gertrude Ederle

A diary means yes indeed. — Gertrude Stein

Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something. — Gertrude Stein

man had blond hair, all right, and he smiled and showed all his teeth. — Gertrude Chandler Warner

Sarah Harrell There is no use there is no use at all in smell, in taste, in teeth, in toast, in anything, there is no use at all and the respect is mutual. — Gertrude Stein

I always wanted to be historical, from almost a baby on, I felt that way about it ... — Gertrude Stein

The next morning was very cold. Benny did not want to get up at all. "No," he said, "it is so cold that I'm not going to get out of bed." Henry looked out at the ocean. "I have an idea," he said. "It's too cold outside today. Let's all stay inside and paint our birds." "Fine!" agreed Jessie. "I'll light the stove and we'll shut the barn door. It will soon be warm. — Gertrude Chandler Warner

I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed. — Gertrude Stein

Grandfather, there's something we want to talk to you about."
Grandfather looked concerned. "There's nothing wrong, is there?"
"It's about the Roth house," Benny said. "It's a funny house."
"Funny?" Grandfather asked.
"Well," Violet began. "Benny is right. There are funny things in the house and funny people outside the house."

The Mystery of the Singing Ghost — Gertrude Chandler Warner