Katherine Mansfield Quotes
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I'm a writer first and a woman after.
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I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.
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I love the rain. I want the feeling of it on my face.
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Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy, you can't build on it it's only good for wallowing in.
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This all sounds very strenuous and serious. But now that I have wrestled with it, it's no longer so. I feel happy - deep down. May you be happy too. I'm going to Fontainebleau on Monday and I'll be back here Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. All is well.
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What do you want most to do? That's what I have to keep asking myself, in the face of difficulties.
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The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.
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Life never becomes a habit to me. It's always a marvel.
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This is not a letter but my arms around you for a brief moment.
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Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.
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Warm, eager, living life - to be rooted in life - to learn, to desire to know, to feel, to think, to act. That is what I want. And nothing less. That is what I must try for. … This all sounds very strenuous and serious. But now that I have wrestled with it, it’s no longer so. I feel happy - deep down. All is well.
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To acknowledge the presence of fear is to give birth to failure.
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The world to me is a dream and the people in it are sleepers. I have known a few instances of intensity but that is all. I want to find a world in which these instances are united. Shall I succeed? I scarcely care. What is important is to try & learn to live, and in relation to everything – not isolated. This isolation is death to me.
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I am treating you as my friend, asking you to share my present minuses in the hope I can ask you to share my future pluses.
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Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.
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If only one could tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools.
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When we can begin to take our failures seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.
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I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.
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Once we have learned to read, meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness.
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Whenever I prepare for a journey I prepare as though for death. Should I never return, all is in order.
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When I say 'I fear' - don't let it disturb you, dearest heart. We all fear when we are in waiting-rooms. Yet we must pass beyond them, and if the other can keep calm, it is all the help we can give each other.
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It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.
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To work - to work! It is such infinite delight to know that we still have the best things to do.
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It's a terrible thing to be alone - yes it is - it is - but don't lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath - as terrible as you like - but a mask.