Phyllis Bottome
There is nothing final about a mistake, except its being taken as final.
There are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties or you alter yourself meeting them.
Neither situations nor people can be altered by the interference of an outsider. If they are to be altered, that alteration must come from within.
To be in the right is often an expensive business.
Truth, though it has many disadvantages, is at least changeless. You can always find it where you left it.
It is very a dangerous thing to have an idea that you will not practice.
There are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties, or you alter yourself to meet them.Collection: Inspirational
Where there is laughter there is always more health than sickness.Collection: Inspirational
It's a good thing to learn early that other people's opinions do not matter, unless they happen to be true.Collection: Learning
if you listen long enough - or is it deep enough? - the silence of a lover can speak plainer than any words! Only you must know how to listen. Pain must have taught you how.Collection: Pain
All persecution is a sign of fear; for if we did not fear the power of an opinion different from our own, we should not mind others holding it.Collection: Mind
Feelings change facts.Collection: Feelings
This is the real tragedy of mankind, that until now the spirit of man has not been able to free itself, even along the path of its own development, from the tentacles of self-deception.Collection: Real
She believed in letting children have a certain amount of rope, and only intervened at the last moment, in order to prevent their hanging themselves by it.Collection: Children
To be a Jew is to be strong with a strength that has outlived persecutions. It is to be wise against ignorance, honest against piracy, harmless against evil, kind against crueltyCollection: Wise
Curiosity is the only thing that really carries through time, isn't it? The creative curiosity, I mean, which fights its way into expression?Collection: Mean
When a reserved person once begins to talk, nothing can stop him; and he does not want to have to listen, until he has quite finished his unfamiliar exertion.Collection: Talking
all daughters, even when most aggravated by their mothers, have a secret respect for them. They believe perhaps that they can do everything better than their mothers can, and many things they can do better, but they have not yet lived long enough to be sure how successfully they will meet the major emergencies of life, which lie, sometimes quite creditably, behind their mothers.Collection: Mother
A blossom must break the sheath it has been sheltered by.Collection: Change
Human beings don't show, any more than cities at dusk, their real necessities! And yet if you looked -- past the circle of outside lights, through the street walls still standing -- into the want and emptiness within!Collection: Wall
Luck enters into every contingency. You are a fool if you forget it -- and a greater fool if you count upon it.Collection: Luck
it is better in the long run to be cheated than to cheat. I have learned that there is no middle way.Collection: Running
If one has one cow, it is always better not to be too familiar with those who have seven.Collection: Cows
To see a shadow and think it is a tree that is a pity; but to see a tree and to think it a shadow can be fatal.Collection: Thinking
... one pets what one degrades; and one has to support what one has enfeebledCollection: Support
it is the possibilities which are the most terrible things in life.Collection: Things In Life
Truth is its own defense.Collection: Truth
Morale is not a single instinct. It has many ingredients. A sense of personal responsibility, the natural courage of an individual, the amount of his acquired self-discipline -- and above all his interest in others -- these together make up the spirit of morale.Collection: Responsibility
The only creative power I know is that of what might roughly be called 'love'; not of course a sentimental love: a far more impersonal and less individual emotion. I sometimes think that migratory birds may have it for each other. They fly in the same direction, and have never been seen to interfere with each other's flights.Collection: Thinking
Some of us cling to our curses if we haven't anything better to cling to!Collection: Curse
... the ears of the hunted grow even keener than a hunter's.Collection: Hunters
... can life be made undignified by any act of man?Collection: Men
Our responsibility to ourselves comes first -- because in a sense what one is oneself is the responsibility that one has for others!Collection: Responsibility
... a woman who has been a nun is never anything else.Collection: Nun
Neither saints nor angels have ever increased my faith in this enigma Life; but what are called 'common men and women' have increased it.Collection: Angel
... not being liked has a certain virtue about it, if the reason for the dislike does not lie in yourself!Collection: Lying
Lots of men hate women now-a-days. ... It was a man-made world, and now we're asking to go shares in the making.Collection: Hate
A man whose every exertion is bent upon showing up the flaws in his wife's character must be at least partially responsible for some of them.Collection: Character
with courage a human being is safe enough. And without it - he is never for one instant safe!Collection: Courage
artists are exposed to great temptations: their eyes see paradise before their souls have reached it, and that is a great danger.Collection: Eye
Every hen thinks she has laid the best egg! Can we not all believe as we choose? But the choice of others - what is that to us? Let them alone.Collection: Believe
When lightning strikes, the mouse is sometimes burned with the farm.Collection: Lightning
We cannot alter facts, but we can alter our ways of looking at them.Collection: Way
In my early life, and probably even today, it is not sufficiently understood that a child's education should include at least a rudimentary grasp of religion, sex, and money. Without a basic knowledge of these three primary facts in a normal human being's life --subjects which stir the emotions, create events and opportunities, and if they do not wholly decide must greatly influence an individual's personality --no human being's education can have a safe foundation.Collection: Education
If money had been the way to save the world, Christ himself would have been rich.Collection: World
A red-hot belief in eternal glory is probably the best antidote to human panic that there is.Collection: Hot
Life was a series of messes, and one spent one's time cleaning them up; if one had any heart at all one also gave a part of one's time to cleaning up those of other people.Collection: Heart
When we refuse to accept our limitations, Nature, who is a stern realist, pays us out.Collection: Pay
I am never at picnics. The ground was not meant to be sat upon in its raw state, I feel sure, and I prefer my food without either caterpillars or drafts!Collection: Were Not Meant To Be
A refugee is as helpless as a new born child - but not so appealing! Besides, a new born child has no memories!Collection: Children