One’s eyes are what one is, one’s mouth is what one becomes.
—John Galsworthy
Topics: Eyes
Come! Let us lay a lance in rest,
And tilt at windmills under a wild sky!
For who would live so petty and unblest
That dare not tilt at something ere he die;
Rather than, screened by safe majority,
Preserve his little life to little end,
And never raise a rebel cry!
—John Galsworthy
Public opinion is always in advance of the law.
—John Galsworthy
There will always be about the same percentage of people capable of real love, and there will always be about the same percentage of people who aren’t.
—John Galsworthy
Topics: Love
Religion was nearly dead because there was no longer real belief in future life; but something was struggling to take its place—service—social service—the ants creed, the bees creed.
—John Galsworthy
Topics: Welfare
Boys and girls should be taught to think first of others in material things; they should be infected with the wisdom to know that in making smooth the way of all lies the road to their own health and happiness.
—John Galsworthy
Topics: Education
A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.
—John Galsworthy
Topics: Action, Unhappiness
States should spend money and effort on this great all-underlying matter of spiritual education as they have hitherto spent them on beating and destroying each other.
—John Galsworthy
Topics: Education
The measure of a democracy is the measure of the freedom of its humblest citizens.
—John Galsworthy
Topics: Freedom
Honesty of thought and speech and written word is a jewel, and they who curb prejudice and seek honorably to know and speak the truth are the only builders of a better life.
—John Galsworthy
Topics: Honesty, Truth
Headlines twice the size of the events.
—John Galsworthy
Topics: News, Events
Nations like men, can be healthy and happy, though comparatively poor… . Wealth is a means to an end, not the end itself. As a synonym for health and happiness, it has had a fair trial and failed dismally.
—John Galsworthy
Topics: Wealth, Poverty
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.
—John Galsworthy
Topics: Idealism, Ideals
The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy.
—John Galsworthy
Topics: Beginnings
When Man evolved Pity, he did a queer thing—deprived himself of the power of living life as it is without wishing it to become something different.
—John Galsworthy
Topics: Sympathy
Essential characteristics of a gentleman: The will to put himself in the place of others; the horror of forcing others into positions from which he would himself recoil; the power to do what seems to him to be right, without considering what others may say or think.
—John Galsworthy
Topics: Conviction
If you do not think about the future, you cannot have one.
—John Galsworthy
Topics: Future, The Future
There is just one rule for politicians all over the world. Don’t say in Power what you say in Opposition: if you do you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.
—John Galsworthy
Topics: Politics, Politicians
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- John Fowles English Novelist
- Charles Reade British Author
- Dennis Potter English Dramatist
- J. B. Priestley British Novelist, Playwright, Essayist
- Edward Lear English Humorist, Illustrator
- Jerome K. Jerome English Humorist, Novelist
- Laurence Housman English Novelist, Dramatist
- Robert Hugh Benson English Author, Clergyman
- Hanif Kureishi British Novelist, Screenwriter
- Ben Elton English Comedian, Writer
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