190 Quotes by T.H. White

On the contrary, he made it clear that the business of the philosophers was to make ideas available, and not to impose them on people.

Saints, as the Old Ones knew very well, were a bad class of people to cross, so the children stood up hastily. ‘Och, now,’ they said. ‘Your Holiness, no offence, we are sure. We were only at wishing to make an exchange of ideas.

Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts uncritically – to those who hardly think about us in return.

Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.

But they woke him with words, their cruel bright weapons.

They believed that the most important thing in the world was to find out what one liked doing, and then to do it. Thus the people who liked being hunters, were hunters; those who liked fishing, fished; and anybody who did not like doing anything at all was supported by the others with the greatest care and commiseration, for they considered him to be the most unfortunate of mortals.

We cannot build the future by avenging the past.

There would be a day – there must be a day – when he would come back to Gramarye with a new Round Table which had no corners, just as the world had none – a table without boundaries between the nations who would sit to feast there. The hope of making it would lie in culture. If people could be persuaded to read and write, not just to eat and make love, there was still a chance that they might come to reason. BUT.

Everybody is always saying what a parfit, gentle knight I am, but it has nothing to do with me. It is Arthur’s idea. It is what he has wished on all the younger generation, like Gareth, and now it is fashionable.