T. H. White Quotes
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We cannot build the future by avenging the past.
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...All endeavours which are directed to a purely worldly end...contain within themselves the germs of their own corruption.
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Only fools want to be great.
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A lot of brainless unicorns swaggering about and calling themselves educated just because they can push each other off a horse with a bit of a stick! It makes me tired.
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You could not give up a human heart as you could give up drinking. The drink was yours, and you could give it up: but your lover’s soul was not your own: it was not at your disposal; you had a duty towards it.
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It is a pity that there are no big creatures to prey on humanity. If there were enough dragons and rocs, perhaps mankind would turn its might against them. Unfortunately man is preyed upon by microbes, which are too small to be appreciated.
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Those who lived by the sword were forced to die by it.
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If it takes a million years for a fish to become a reptile, has Man, in our few hundred, altered out of recognition?
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A chaos of mind and body - a time for weeping at sunsets and at the glamour of moonlight - a confusion and profusion of beliefs and hopes, in God, in Truth, in Love, and in Eternity - an ability to be transported by the beauty of physical objects - a heart to ache or swell- a joy so hoyful and a sorrow so sorrowful that oceans could lie between them.
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Believe me, the so-called primitive races who worshipped animals as gods were not so daft as people choose to pretend. At least they were humble. Why should not God have come to the earth as an earth-worm? There are a great many more worms than men, and they do a great deal more good.
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Perhaps he does not want to be friends with you until he knows what you are like. With owls, it is never easy-come-easy-go.
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My boy, you shall be everything in the world, animal, vegetable, mineral, protista, or virus, for all I care-before I have done with you-but you will have to trust my superior backsight. The time is not yet ripe for you to be a hawk... so you may as well sit down for the moment and learn to be a human being.
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Jenny, all my life I have wanted to do miracles. I have wanted to be holy. I suppose it was ambition or pride or some other unworthy thing. It was not enough for me to conquer the world--I wanted to conquer heaven too.
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Dogs, like very small children, are quite mad.
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There were thousands of brown books in leather bindings, some chained to the book-shelves and others propped against each other as if they had had too much to drink and did not really trust themselves. These gave out a smell of must and solid brownness which was most secure.
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The best thing for being sad ... is to learn something.
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Mordred and Agravaine thought Arthur hypocritical—as all decent men must be, if you assume that decency can’t exist.
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The word "feral" has a kind of magic potency which allied itself to two other words, "ferocious" and "free." To revert to a feral state!
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It seems, in tragedy, that innocence is not enough.
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The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else do it wrong without comment.
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In war, our elders may give the orders...but it is the young who have to fight.
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It is so fatally easy to make young children believe that they are horrible.
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It is the bad people who need to have principles to restrain them.
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Kings can only use their best tools.