T.H. White quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by T.H. White

T.H. White Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from T.H. White on Wise Famous Quotes.

Perhaps he does not want to be friends with you until he knows what you are like. With owls, it is never easy-come-easy-go.

All endeavours which are directed to a purely worldly end ... contain within themselves the germs of their own corruption.

I am an anarchist, like any other sensible person.
~ Merlyn

Dogs, like very small children, are quite mad.

Yes, that is the equality of man. Slaughter anybody who is better than you are, and then we shall be equal soon enough. All equally dead.

I will tell you something else, King, which may be a surprise for you. It will not happen for hundreds of years, but both of us are to come back.

God is love, the bishops tell.
Yes, I know, But love is hell.

Mordred and Agravaine thought Arthur hypocritical - as all decent men must be, if you assume that decency can't exist.

Kings can only use their best tools.

People commit suicide through weakness, not through strength.

It is good to put your life in other people's hands.

War is like a fire. One man may start it, but it will spread all over. It is not about one thing in particular.

If people reach perfection they vanish, you know.

He could do what all men wanted to, that is, fly

The destiny of all species is extinction as such, fortunately for them.

Only fools want to be great.

Everything not forbidden is compulsory

People will do the basest things on account of their so-called honor.

The author says people are guilty of wrecking the present because the future was bound to be a wreck.

When Other blood spurts from the knife, Then everything is fine.

But his heart had been made as a match for Elaine's, and now it was unable to bear the burden which hers had been forced to lay down.

I don't think things ought to be done because you are able to do them. I think they should be done because you ought to do them.

Aviators live by hours, not by days.

One more try,' he asked, 'We are not quite done.' 'What is the use of trying?' 'It is a thing which people do.

Education is experience and experience is self-reliance.

when a moral sense begins to rot it is worse than when you had none.

Wrongs have to be redressed by reason, not by force.

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.

Any one war seems rooted in its antecedents.

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

All forms of collectivism are mistaken, according to the human skull.

Middle-aged people can balance between believing in God and breaking all the commandments without difficulty.

If God is supposed to be merciful,' [Arthur] retorted, 'I don't see why He shouldn't allow people to stumble into heaven, just as well as climb there

Thy sorrow will come from thine own mouth.

You run a grave risk, my boy," said the magician, "of being turned into a piece of bread, and toasted.

The Victorians had not been anxious to go away for the weekend. The Edwardians, on the contrary, were nomadic.

Unfortunately we have tried to establish Right by Might, and you just can't do that

We have had a good time while we were young, but it is in the nature of Time to fly.

Were they, for some purpose almost too cunning for belief, only disguised as themselves?

I don't think you can very well give people as presents: they might not like it.

We cannot build the future by avenging the past.

Who said that?" asked Sir Grummore.
"But the sword said it, like I tell you."
"Talkative weapon," remarked Sir Grummore skeptically.

The word "feral" has a kind of magic potency which allied itself to two other words, "ferocious" and "free." To revert to a feral state!

It was at the outskirts of the world that the Old Things accumulated, like driftwood round the edges of the sea. ("The Troll")

The snow-haired Uncle Dap, so old as to be absolutely fabulous, was trying to jump over his walking-stick.

Cavall came simply and gave his heart and soul.

Even his conversation was, as it were, a spoken part.

The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else do it wrong without comment.

People are dupes, and wicked too. That is what makes it interesting to get them better.

God is love, the parson whined.
Yes, and is he also blind?

In war, our elders may give the orders ... but it is the young who have to fight.

Might does not make right! Right makes right!

Gawaine and Gareth took turns with the fat ass, one of them whacking it while the other rode bareback.

After several minutes [Wart] said, "Is one allowed to speak as a human being, or does the thing about being seen and not heard have to apply?

Queen Morgause," said Gwenever thoughtfully, "must have been a strange person.

Grown-ups have developed an unpleasant habit of comforting themselves for their degradation by pretending that children are childish.

It is the bad people who need to have principles to restrain them.

In going to sleep he had learned to vanquish light, and now the light could not rewake him.

When shall I be dead and rid Of all the wrong my father did? How long, how long 'till spade and hearse Put to sleep my mother's curse?

He began to see why Merlyn had always clowned on purpose. It had been a means of helping people to learn in a happy way.

The miracle was that he had been allowed to do a miracle. And ever, says Mallory, Sir Lancelot wept, as he had been a child that had been beaten.

Merlyn always said that sportsmanship was the curse of the world, and so it is.

If there is one thing I can't stand, it is stupidity. I always say that stupidity is the Sin against the Holy Ghost.

Wars are never fought for one reason," he said. "They are fought for dozens of reasons, in a muddle.

The increasingly cynical court thought Arthur, hypocritical, as all decent men must be if you assume decency cannot exist.

He felt in his heart cruelty and cowardice, the things which made him brave and kind.

made of stone. It had no windows and only one door, through which you had to crawl.

I think I ought to have some eddication,"said the Wart, "I can't think of anything to do.

He may even have felt that God needed him more than Guenever did.

Nobody can be too careful about their habits of speech.

It was called a tribute before a battle and a ransom afterwards.

Nobody can be saved from anything, unless they save themselves.

The fisherman fishes as the urchin eats cream buns, from lust.

It is difficult to write about a real person.

It is so fatally easy to make young children believe that they are horrible.

True warfare is rarer in Nature than cannibalism.

It is only the people who are lacking, or bad, or inferior, who have to be good at things.

So little time to pass? said Merlyn, and a big tear ran down to the end of his nose.

The poor fellow had never been cut out to be a villain.

Hic jacet Arthurus Rex quandam Rexque futurus - the once and future king.

War is like a fire, Agnes. One man may start it, but it will spread all over. It is not about any one thing in particular.

I can see that you spoke in ignorance, and I bitterly regret that I should have been so petty as to take offence where none was intended.

He fancied himself on his humanity towards animals, as so many people do who are inhuman to their fellow men ...

If it takes a million years for a fish to become a reptile, has Man, in our few hundred, altered out of recognition?

Wherever they went and wherever they slept, the east wind whistled in the reeds, and the geese went over high in the starlight, honking at the stars.

I would recommend a solo flight to all prospective suicides. It tends to make clear the issue of whether one enjoys being alive or not.

The best thing for being sad ... is to learn something.

Ought to be havin' a first-rate eddication, at their age. When I was their age I was doin' all this Latin and stuff

Those who lived by the sword were forced to die by it.

Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance.

And do you know another thing, Arthur? Life is too bitter already, without territories and wars and noble feuds.

The bravest people are the ones who don't mind looking like cowards.

The destiny of man is an individualistic destiny.

He was neither clever nor sensitive, but he was loyal
stubbornly sometimes, and even annoyingly and stupidly so in later life.

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

He had conquered murder only to be faced with war. There were no laws for that.

a king can only work with his best tools.

It seems, in tragedy, that innocence is not enough.

Who doth ambition shun And loves to lie in the sun, Seeking the food he eats And pleased with what he gets,

The race will find that capitalists and communists modify themselves so much during the ages that they end by being indistinguishable as democrats ...