41 Quotes by Gerald Brenan

The more we feel sorry for ourselves, the less sorry others will feel for us. People don't waste their small store of sympathy on those who can provide it so richly for themselves.

As Coleridge said, "We receive but what we give." The happy life is a life of continual generosity in which we go out to meet and acclaim the world.

We soon cease to feel the grief at the deaths of our friends, yet we continue to the end of our lives to miss them. They are still with us in their absence.

We should all live as if we were never going to die, for it is the deaths of our friends that hurt us, not our own.

A bad memory is the mother of invention.

The cliche is dead poetry.

When I write a page that reads badly I know that it is myself who has written it. When it reads well it has come through from somewhere else.

The only test of work of literature is that it shall please other ages than its own.

One road to happiness is to cultivate curiosity about everything. Not only about people but about subjects, not only about the arts but about history and foreign customs. Not only about countries and cities, but about plants and animals. Not only about lichened rocks and curious markings on the bark of trees, but about stars and atoms. Not only about your friends but about that strange labyrinth we inhabit which we call ourselves. Then, if we do that, we will never suffer a moment's boredom....