121 Quotes by John Galsworthy

Light-heartedness always made Soames suspicious – there was generally some reason for it.

Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.

It’s not life that counts but the fortitude you bring into it.

Only those strong enough to keep silent about self are strong enough to be sure of self.

We are a breed of spoilers!’ thought Jolyon, ’close and greedy; the bloom of life is not safe with us. Let her come to me as she will, when she will, not at all if she will not. Let me be just her stand-by, her perching-place; never-never her cage!

Admiration of beauty and longing for possession are not love.

By the cigars they smoke, and the composers they love, ye shall know the texture of men’s souls.

Politics are popularly supposed to govern the direction, and statesmen to be the guardian angels, of Civilization. It seems to me that they have little or no power over its growth. They are of it, and move with it. Their concern is rather with the body than with the mind or soul of a nation. One needs not to be an engineer to know that to pull a man up a wall one must be higher than he; that to raise general taste one must have better taste than that of those whose taste he is raising.

I loathe the idea of cutting down trees. Two hundred years of shape and energy all gone in half an hour. It’s revolting.