L.P. Hartley Quotes

Twere better far That gods should quaff their nectar merrily, And men sing out the day like grasshoppers, So may they haply lull the watchful thunder.

It's better to write about things you feel than about things you know about.

Her very frowns are fairer far Than smiles of other maidens are.

To force a female to do things in male fashion is not equal opportunity, it is distorted idealism.

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

Oh, where is man That mortal god, that hath no mortal kin Or like on earth? Shall Nature's orator The interpreter of all her mystic strains Shall he be mute in Nature's jubilee?

With all your music, loud and lustily, With every dainty joy of sight and smell, Prepare a banquet meet to entertain The Lord of Thunder, that hath set you free From old oppression.

It is never difficult to see images – when the principle of the image is embedded in the soul.

If we take care of the inches, we will not have to worry about the miles.

Swans sing before they die - 'twere no bad thing Should certain persons die before they sing.

We discover and invent new ways of finding out the same old things.

By getting as close to the true idea of religion, of spirituality as it is possible for us to get.. ...we would be in possession of the only tangible relationship tot the deity in things.

My work has the abstraction underneath it all now & what I deliberately set out to do down here, for this is the perfect realistic abstraction in landscape.

(I was) happily contended to be climbing the heights and the clouds by the brush method.. ...rendering the God-spirit in the mountains.

The virtue of Yankee upbringing spiritually speaking is of more downright value to me than any past heritages.

A reaction, to be pleasant, must be simple.

Go your way. Forget Prometheus, And all the woe that he is doom'd to bear; By his own choice this vile estate preferring To ignorant bliss and unfelt slavery.

I'll marry you if you admit that respect, admiration, and trust equals love.

There's no such thing as adventure. There's no such thing as romance. There's only trouble and desire.

Pray to be perfect, though material leaven Forbid the spirit so on earth to be; But if for any wish thou darest not pray, Then pray to God to cast that wish away.

I could never be French, I could never become German - I shall always remain American - the essence which is in me is American mysticism just as Davies declared it when he saw those first landscapes.

I harp always on the 'idea' of life as I dwell perpetually on the existence of the moment.

My dream had become my reality: my old life was a discarded husk.

You insisted on thinking of them as angels, even if they were fallen angels.

Grown-ups didn't seem to realize that for me, as for most other schoolboys, it was easier to keep silent than to speak. I was a natural oyster.

I have the greatest fans. I have fans that come from soap opera world, I have fans that come from superhero world, which are a whole different section of fans. They're so cool.

I stumble all the time parenting my daughter. I ask her for forgiveness all the time and I preach forgiveness to her.

Don't forget where you came from and treat people a certain way.

I'm always going to be looking for something artistically or whatever. I think that's part of being driven, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm unhappy.

TRUST took as its starting point the question, What would happen if a movie took the character of a teen-age girl seriously?.

I think maybe written films are better than real films. You can see them in your head and yet everything is exactly as you want it to be.

To see things as they really were--what an empoverishment!

The beauty of the picture is an abiding concrete of the painter's vision.

Be not afraid to pray--to pray is right. Pray, if thou canst, with hope; but ever pray, Though hope be weak or sick with long delay; Pray in the darkness, if there be no light.

The soul of man is larger than the sky, Deeper than ocean, or the abysmal dark Of the unfathomed center.

Man is more than half of nature's treasure.

The so-called new morality is too often the old immorality condoned.

I'm still waiting for somebody to wake me up.

The number of arguments is unimportant unless some of them are correct.

I don't have a gardener because I enjoy pulling weeds. It's hard to explain but there is something fulfilling about pulling out a weed and knowing that you got all the roots.

The reading of tourist prospectuses is one of the joys of the world -- it is like operetta in prose -- all so flowery and heavenlike.

I don't want to escape via intellectual ruses – I want affirmations via passionate embraces & you can't have life unless you live it.

The beauty of coaching is that you are working with human beings. I feel very comfortable with my staff that we can make a difference, that we can make a difference on the ice.

A hockey team is like a puzzle. Every piece is vital.

I wish that we could tumble them in the dryer for 30 minutes and get them to shrink, but that won't happen.

Readers tend to devour short stories on a newssheet, but would be disinclined to read them in collections

This notion of changing technology interests me. I work on a computer now, and it's not been easy to adjust. I still prefer to have my hands on film when I'm editing.

I have no problem at all taking my shirt off to tell a story.

I would tell myself the same thing that I continue to tell myself today, which is don't sweat the small things.

I love acting, and so whenever I get the opportunity to act, I'm happy. I'm easy to please when it comes to that kind of stuff. I don't know what I'd do without it.