707 Quotes by Julian Barnes

Pride makes us long for a solution to things – a solution, a purpose, a final cause; but the better telescopes become, the more stars appear.

But the very action of naming something that subsequently happens—of wishing specific evil, and that evil coming to pass—this still has a shiver of the otherworldly about it.

I don't ever want to get old. Spare me that. Have you the power? No, even you don't have the power, alas.

If you remember your past too well you start blaming your present for it. Look what they did to me, that's what caused me to be like this, it's not my fault. Permit me to correct you: it probably is your fault. And kindly spare me the details.

What was the point of scientific advance without moral advance? The railway would merely permit more people to move about, meet and be stupid together

So (and this would have happened earlier, but I am only remembering it now): I am visiting her one afternoon.

The present looks back at some great figure of an earlier century and wonders, Was he on our side? Was he a goodie? What a lack of self-confidence this implies: the present wants both to patronise the past by adjudicating on its political acceptability, and also to be flattered by it, to be patted on the back and told to keep up the good work.

Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.

He didn’t really like travel, of course. He liked the idea of travel, and the memory of travel, but not travel itself.