James Stephens Quotes

39 quotes in 475 categories

• Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself.
• What the heart knows today the head will understand tomorrow.
• It is by love alone that we understand anything
• Let the past be content with itself, for man needs forgetfulness as well as memory
• Tell me your past, my beloved, for a man is his past, and is to be known by it.
• A secret is a weapon and a friend.
• By having much, you are fitted to have more.
• To understand the theory which underlies all things is not sufficient. Theory is but the preparation for practice.
• Chaos is the first condition. Order is the first law. Continuity is the first reflection. Quietude is the first happiness.
• Women are stronger than men - they do not die of wisdom.
• We are washed both on coming into the world and on going out of it, and we take no pleasure from the first washing nor…
• Any fool can wash himself, but every wise man knows that it is an unnecessary labour, for nature will quickly reduce him to a natural…
• A Leprecaun without a pot of gold is like a rose without perfume, a bird without a wing, or an inside without an outside.
• Quietness is the beginning of virtue. To be silent is to be beautiful. Stars do not make a noise.
• Life runs to death as its goal, and we should go towards that next stage of experience either carelessly as to what must be, or…
• A man and a woman may become quite intimate in a quarter of an hour. Almost certainly will they endeavour to explain themselves to each…
• The mysteries of death and birth occupy women far more than is the case with men, to whom political and mercantile speculations are more congenial.
• If men understood domestic economy half as well as women do, then their political economy and their entire consequent statecraft would not be the futil…
• To work is nothing; the king on his throne, the priest kneeling before the Holy Altar, all people in all places had to work, but…
• God did not need any assistance, but man did; bitterly he wanted it, and the giving of such assistance was the proper business of a…

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