J Galsworthy Quotes & Sayings

Public opinion's always in advance of the law. — John Galsworthy

Beginnings are always messy. — John Galsworthy

In choosing, moreover, for his father an amiable man of fifty-two, who had already lost an only son, and for his mother a woman of thirty-eight, whose first and only child he was, little Jon had done well and wisely. What had saved him from becoming a cross between a lap dog and a little prig, had been his father's adoration of his mother, for even little Jon could see that she was not merely just his mother, and that he played second fiddle to her in his father's heart: What he played in his mother's heart he knew not yet. — John Galsworthy

Early morning does not mince words. — John Galsworthy

Swithin! And the fellow had gone and died, last November, at the age of seventy-nine, renewing the doubt whether Forsytes could live for ever, which had first arisen when Aunt Ann passed away. — John Galsworthy

There are two irreconcilable ideas of God. There's the Unknowable Creative Principle---one believes in That. And there's the Sum of altruism in man---naturally one believes in That...The sublime poem of the Christ life was man's attempt to join those two irreconcilable conceptions of God. And since the Sum of human altruism was as much a part of the Unknowable Creative Principle as anything else in Nature and the Universe, a worse link might have been chosen after all! Funny---how one went through life without seeing it in that sort of way! — John Galsworthy

So this wonderful city
Has only dead ashes for me. — John Galsworthy

He might wish and wish and never get it - the beauty and the loving in the world! — John Galsworthy

As a man lives and thinks, so he will write. — John Galsworthy

Slang is vigorous and apt. Probably most of our vital words were once slang. — John Galsworthy

Take modern courtships! They resulted in the same thing as under George the Second, but took longer to reach it, owing to the motor-cycle and the standing lunch. — John Galsworthy

But in a private library, you can at any moment converse with Socrates or Shakespeare or Carlyle or Dumas or Dickens or Shaw or Barrie or Galsworthy. And there is no doubt that in these books you see these men at their best. They wrote for you. They "laid themselves out," they did their ultimate best to entertain you, to make a favorable impression. You are necessary to them as an audience is to an actor; only instead of seeing them masked, you look into their innermost heart of heart. — William Lyon Phelps

His natural taciturnity was in his favour; nothing could be more calculated to give people, especially people with property (Soames had no other clients), the impression that he was a safe man. And he was safe. [ ... ] How could he fall, when his soul abhorred circumstances which render a fall possible - a man cannot fall off the floor! — John Galsworthy

There are moments when Nature reveals the passion hidden beneath the careless calm of her ordinary moods-violent spring flashing white on almond-blossom through the purple clouds; a snowy, moonlit peak, with its single star, soaring up to the passionate blue; or against the flames of sunset, an old yew-tree standing dark guardian of some fiery secret. — John Galsworthy

Matters change and morals change; men remain. — John Galsworthy

Really," said Winifred suddenly; "it almost seems like Fate. Only that's so old-fashioned. — John Galsworthy

Oh! isn't it stupid, the war?-as if it was not good to be alive."
He wanted to say: "You can't tell how good it is to be alive till you're facing death, because you don't live till then. And when a whole lot of you feel like that-and are ready to give their lives for each other, it's worth all the rest of life put together." But he couldn't get it out to this girl who believed in nothing. — John Galsworthy

Come! Let us lay a lance in rest,
And tilt at windmills under a wild sky!
For who would live so petty and unblest
That dare not tilt at something ere he die;
Rather than, screened by safe majority,
Preserve his little life to little end,
And never raise a rebel cry! — John Galsworthy

Dreaming is the poetry of Life, and we must be forgiven if we indulge in it a little. — John Galsworthy

A man is the sum of his actions, of what he has done, of what he can do, Nothing else. — John Galsworthy

We are a breed of spoilers!' thought Jolyon, 'close and greedy; the bloom of life is not safe with us. Let her come to me as she will, when she will, not at all if she will not. Let me be just her stand-by, her perching-place; never-never her cage! — John Galsworthy

We are not living in a private world of our own. Everything we say and do and think has its effect on everything around us. — John Galsworthy

The value of a sentiment is the amount of sacrifice you are prepared to make for it. — John Galsworthy

Every phase and question of life is brought more and more into the limelight. Theatres, cinemas, the radio, and even lectures, assist the process. But they do not, and should not replace reading, because when we are just watching and listening, somebody is taking very good care that we should not stop and think. The danger in this age is not of our remaining ignorant; it is that we should lose the power of thinking for ourselves. Problems are more and more put before us, but, except to crossword puzzles and detective mysteries, do we attempt to find the answers for ourselves? Less and less. The short cut seems ever more and more desirable. But the short cut to knowledge is nearly always the longest way round. There is nothing like knowledge, picked up by or reasoned out for oneself. — John Galsworthy

When a Forsyte was engaged, married, or born, the Forsytes were present; when a Forsyte died - but no Forsyte had as yet died; they did not die; death being contrary to their principles, they took precautions against it, the instinctive precautions of highly vitalized persons who resent encroachments on their property. — John Galsworthy

It's not life that counts but the fortitude you bring into it. — John Galsworthy

That tendency ... to lie awake between the hours of two and four, when the chrysalis of faint misgiving becomes so readily the butterfly of panic. — John Galsworthy

James and the other eight children of 'Superior Dosset,' of whom there are still five alive, may be said to have represented Victorian England, with its principles of trade and individualism at five per cent, and your money back - if you know what that means. At all events they've turned thirty thousand pounds into a cool million between them in the course of their long lives. ( ... ) Their day is passing, and their type, not altogether for the advantage of the country. They were pedestrian, but they too were sound. — John Galsworthy

Dawn has power to fertilise the most matter-of-fact vision. — John Galsworthy

The biggest tragedy of life is the utter impossibility to change what you have done — John Galsworthy