Ellen Glasgow Quotes

Many of the men who had come to the wilderness to practice religion appeared to have forgotten its true nature.

Energy had fastened upon her like a disease.

What fools people are when they think they can make two lives belong together by saying words over them.

A farmer's got to be born, same as a fool. You can't make a corn pone out of flour dough by the twistin' of it.

I have written chiefly because, though I have often dreaded the necessity, I have found it more painful, in the end, not to write.

Life has taught me that the greatest tragedy is not to die too soon but to live too long.

Theories have nothing to do with life.

One cannot lay a foundation by scattering stones, nor is a reputation for good work to be got by strewing volumes about the world.

Surely the novel should be a form of art - but art was not enough. It must contain not only the perfection of art, but the imperfection of nature.

There wouldn't be half as much fun in the world if it weren't for children and men, and there ain't a mite of difference between them under the skins.

The age is a vociferous one, and no prophet is without honor who is able to strike an attitude and to speak loud enough to make himself heard.

Tilling the fertile soil of man's vanity.

Spring was running in a thin green flame over the valley.

Nothing, except the weather report or a general maxim of conduct, is so unsafe to rely upon as a theory of fiction.

But, of course only morons would ever think or speak of themselves as intellectuals. That's why they all look so sad.

A doctrine of endurance flows easily from our lips when we are enduring jam and our neighbors dry bread, and it is still possible for us to become resigned to the afflictions of our brother.

I suppose I am a born novelist, for the things I imagine are more vital and vivid to me than the things I remember.

There is in every human being, I think, a native country of the mind, where, protected by inaccessible barriers, the sensitive dream life may exist safely.

Borrowed illusions are better than none.

First, I was an idealist (that was early - fools are born, not made, you know); next I was a realist; now I am a pessimist, and, by Jove! if things get much worse I'll become a humorist.

idealism, that gaudy coloring matter of passion, fades when it is brought beneath the trenchant white light of knowledge. Ideals, like mountains, are best at a distance.

I liked human beings, but I did not love human nature.

To drink for pleasure may be a distraction, but to drink from misery is always a danger.

irony is an indispensable ingredient of the critical vision; it is the safest antidote to sentimental decay.

marriage is mostly puttin' up with things, I reckon, when it ain't makin' believe.

Experience has taught me that the only cruelties people condemn are those with which they do not happen to be familiar.

Nobody, not even the old, not even the despairing, wished to come to an end in time or in eternity.

The nearer she came to death, the more, by some perversity of nature, did she enjoy living.

What a man marries for's hard to tell ... an' what a woman marries for's past findin' out.

She must face her grief where the struggle is always hardest-in the place where each trivial object is attended by pleasant memories.

... to be "literary" appeared to my deluded innocence as an unending romance.

Pessimism is the affectation of youth, the reality of age.

There is no monster more destructive than the inventive mind that has outstripped philosophy.

I had no place in any coterie, or in any reciprocal self-advertising. I stood alone. I stood outside. I wanted only to learn. I wanted only to write better.

So long as the serpent continues to crawl on the ground, the primary influence of woman will be indirect.

for my own purpose, I defined the art of fiction as experience illuminated.

To mourn was distressing, but to endeavor to mourn and fail was worse than distress.

The hardest thing to believe when you're young is that people will fight to stay in a rut, but not to get out of one.

Happiness is a hardy annual.

I don't like human nature, but I do like human beings.

I never saw the man yet that came out of politics as clean as he went into 'em.

The truth is I've got the land on my back, an' it's drivin' me. Land is a hard driver.

And where was happiness if it sprung not from the soil? Where contentment if it dwelt not near to Nature?

Youth is always an enemy to the old.

I waited and worked, and watched the inferior exalted for nearly thirty years; and when recognition came at last, it was too late to alter events, or to make a difference in living.

a self-made martyr is a poor thing.

audacity is of all qualities the most youthful.

It would appear, from the best examples, that the proper way of beginning a preface to one's work is with a humble apology for having written at all.

Yes, I learned long ago that the only satisfaction of authorship lies in finding the very few who understand what we mean. As for outside rewards, there is not one that I have ever discovered.

... though not invariably the worst choice, war is always an obscene horror.