T. H. White Quotes
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We cannot build the future by avenging the past.
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Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts uncritically--to those who hardly think about us in return.
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Life is too bitter already, without territories and wars and noble feuds
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If people reach perfection they vanish, you know.
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The bravest people are the ones who don’t mind looking like cowards.
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You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn.
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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.
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Grown-ups have developed an unpleasant habit of comforting themselves for their degradation by pretending that children are childish.
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Kings can only use their best tools.
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The destiny of man is an individualistic destiny.
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Unfortunately we have tried to establish Right by Might, and you can 't do that.
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It was called a tribute before a battle and a ransom afterwards.
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Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness.
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It is good to put your life in other people's hands.
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The fate of this man or that man was less than a drop, although it was a sparkling one, in the great blue motion of the sunlit sea.
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Mordred and Agravaine thought Arthur hypocritical—as all decent men must be, if you assume that decency can’t exist.
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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.
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The destiny of man is to unite, not to divide.
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Why can't you harness Might so that it works for Right? I know it sounds nonsense, but, I mean, you can't just say there is no such thing. The Might is there, in the bad half of people, and you can't neglect it. You can't cut it out but you might be able to direct it, if you see what I mean, so that it was useful instead of bad.
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Dogs, like very small children, are quite mad.
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Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.
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The weather behaved itself. In the spring, the little flowers came out obediently in the meads, and the dew sparkled, and the birds sang. In the summer it was beautifully hot for no less than four months, and, if it did rain just enough for agricultural purposes, they managed to arrange it so that it rained while you were in bed. In the autumn the leaves flamed and rattled before the west winds, tempering their sad adieu with glory. And in the winter, which was confined by statute to two months, the snow lay evenly, three feet thick, but never turned into slush.
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In war, our elders may give the orders...but it is the young who have to fight.
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Kay was older and bigger than the Wart, so that he was bound to win in the end, but he was more nervous and imaginative. He could imagine the effect of each blow that was aimed at him, and this weakened his defense. Wart was only an infuriated hurricane.
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War is like a fire. One man may start it, but it will spread all over. It is not about any one thing in particular.
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I am an anarchist, like any other sensible person. ~ Merlyn
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If there is one thing I can't stand, it is stupidity. I always say that stupidity is the Sin against the Holy Ghost.
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Only fools want to be great.
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The race will find that capitalists and communists modify themselves so much during the ages that they end by being indistinguishable as democrats.
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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.
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