6 John Galsworthy Quotes on Life

John Galsworthy quotes on life

1. The world's a fine place for those who go out to take it; there's lots of unknown stuff' in it yet. I'll fill your lap, my pretty, so full of treasures that you shan't know yourself. A man wasn't meant to sit at home...

3. 'To take life,' went on the old man in a voice which, though charged with strong emotion, seemed to be speaking to itself, 'was the chief mark of the insensate barbarism still prevailing in those days. It sprang from that most irreligious fetish, the belief in the permanence of the individual ego after death. From the worship of that fetish had come all the sorrows of the human race. ... They did not stop to love each other in this life; they were so sure they had all eternity to do it in. The doctrine was an invention to enable men to act like dogs with clear consciences. Love could never come to full fruition till it was destroyed.'

5. When Man evolved Pity, he did a queer thing - deprived himself of the power of living life as it is without wishing it to become something different.

6. Life was to be lived - not torpidly dozed through in this queer cultured place, where age was in the blood! Life was for love - to be enjoyed!

34. I sat, just watching the moon creep up, and hearing the thin, dry rustle of the leaves along the holly hedge. And there came to me this thought: What is this Universe - that never had beginning and will never have an end - but a myriad striving to perfect pictures never the same, so blending and fading one into another, that all form one great perfected picture? And what are we - ripples on the tides of a birthless, deathless, equipoised Creative-Purpose - but little works of Art?

35. 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!