T. H. White Quotes
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The bravest people are the ones who don’t mind looking like cowards.
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Middle-aged people can balance between believing in God and breaking all the commandments without difficulty.
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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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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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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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The miracle was that he had been allowed to do a miracle. And ever, says Mallory, Sir Lancelot wept, as he had been a child that had been beaten.
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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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Dogs, like very small children, are quite mad.
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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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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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It seems, in tragedy, that innocence is not enough.
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Those who lived by the sword were forced to die by it.
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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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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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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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The best thing for being sad ... is to learn something.
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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 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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Kings can only use their best tools.
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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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In war, our elders may give the orders...but it is the young who have to fight.
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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.