Quotessence
Home / Authors / T. H. White Books
T. H. White

T. H. White Books

Author

The Goshawk

A source page for quotes linked to T. H. White.

0 quotes

Related Quotes

“Finally there are the four boys in the high castle. Gawaine, who was the oldest of them and had the reddest hair, was fourteen; Gareth, who was the youngest and fairest, was nine; and they were all four quite wild. Gawaine was passionate; Agravaine was sulky; Gaheris was stupid; and Gareth was a dear. Their mother's character had two effects on them while they were small, the one good and the other bad. The good effect as that she was so selfish and cared so little for them that they were allowed to run wild, thus drawing a lot of niceness and reality out of the simple people in the village below. The bad effect was that, as she treated them like lap dogs when she did notice them, they behaved like lap dogs towards her. They adored her, and starved for her love.”

“Nobody can be saved from anything, unless they save themselves. It is hopeless doing things for people - it is often very dangerous to do things at all - and the only thing worth doing for the race is to increase its stock of ideas. Then, if you make available a larger stock, people are at liberty to help themselves from out of it. By this process the means of improvement is offered, to be accepted or rejected freely, and there is a faint hope of progress in the course of millennia. Such is the business of the philosopher, to open new ideas. It is not his business to impose them on people.”

“It is a pity that there are no big creatures to prey on humanity. If there were enough dragons and rocs, perhaps mankind would turn its might against them. Unfortunately man is preyed upon by microbes, which are too small to be appreciated.”

“There is a thing called knowledge of the world, which people do not have until they are middle-aged. It is something which cannot be taught to younger people, because it is not logical and does not obey laws which are constant. It has no rules. Only, in the long years which bring women to the middle of life, a sense of balance develops...when she is beginning to hate her used body, she suddenly finds that she can do it. She can go on living.”

“But there was a time when each of us stood naked before the world, confronting life as a serious problem with which we were intimately and passionately concerned... There was a time when Free Love versus Catholic Morality was a question of as much importance to our hot bodies as if a pistol had been clapped to our heads. Further back, there were times when we wondered with all our souls what the world was, what love was, what we were ourselves.”

“A chaos of mind and body - a time for weeping at sunsets and at the glamour of moonlight - a confusion and profusion of beliefs and hopes, in God, in Truth, in Love, and in Eternity - an ability to be transported by the beauty of physical objects - a heart to ache or swell- a joy so hoyful and a sorrow so sorrowful that oceans could lie between them.”

“There is one fairly good reason for fighting - and that is, if the other man starts it. You see, wars are a great wickedness, perhaps the greatest wickedness of a wicked species. They are so wicked that they must not be allowed. When you can be perfectly certain that the other man started them, then is the time when you might have a sort of duty to stop them.”