T.H. White Quotes

“Oh, dear, oh, dear, I wish I had never seen that filthy sword at all.”

“I was never your father nor of your blood, but I wote well ye are of an higher blood than I wend ye were.”

″‘Plenty of people have told me you are not my father,’ said the Wart, ‘but it does not matter a bit.‘”

“Power is of the individual mind, but the mind’s power is not enough. Power of the body decides everything in the end, and only Might is Right.”

“But inside himself he was proud of the Wart for staying out after a hawk, and prouder still to see that he had got it.”

“Why can’t you harness Might so that it works for Right?… The Might is there, in the bad half of people, and you can’t neglect it.”

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

″‘Tell you!’ he exclaimed. ‘And what is going to happen when there is nobody to tell you? Are you never going to think for yourself?‘”

“Only fools want to be great.”

“Arthur was happy. Like the man in Eden before the fall, he was enjoying his innocence and fortune.”

“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.”

“You think education is something to be done when all else fails?”

“All the world loves a lover.”

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

″‘The best thing for being sad,’ replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, ‘is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails.‘”

″...but it seems, in tragedy, that innocence is not enough.”

“There is one fairly good reason for fighting—and that is, if the other man starts it. You see, wars are a wickedness, perhaps the greatest wickedness of a wicked species. They are so wicked that they must not be allowed.”

“I ought to have thought of the people who had no armour.”

“Whoso pulleth Out This Sword of This Stone and Anvil, is Rightwise King Born of All England.”

“There is a thing about Time and Space which the philosopher Einstein is going to find out. Some people call it Destiny.”

“It is literally true that this cook had a bicycle in the basement corridor, which she used to ride along the corridor, when she had to answer the bell.”

“It is difficult but important to believe that this precious pair may have been trying to do the best they could, considering the kind of people they were.”

“There, perhaps, the Mistress Hill who was to become Mistress Masham- or even Mistress Morley herself, had sat in silks and laces, in the summer weather, drinking tay.”

“Her happiest times were when the Vicar was in London and Miss Brown was in bed with a headache. Then she would be mad with pleasure, a sort of wild but earnest puppy rushing about with the slipper of her imagination, tearing the heart out of it.”

″...on the island, there was a plastered temple in the shape of a cupola, or rather, to give it its proper name, of a monopteron. It was a dome like the top of an eggshell, raised on five slender columns, and it was called Mistress Masham’s Repose.”

″...the strange thing was that everything was neat. She looked everywhere, but not a soul was to be seen. Not a leaf stirred in the little amphitheater, nor was there any trace of a hut to live in. There was no shed to hold a lawn mower, nor any mower standing on the lawn. Yet somebody had mowed the lawn.”

″...people must not tyrannize, nor try to be great because they are little.”

″‘If you meant that you have come for breakfast, I fear that I have nothing left but half a pound of mustard.’ She put her hand on the bottle-green sleeve and made him drop the bag. The reference to breakfast had touched her, for she knew he seldom had enough to eat.”

“My dear, you are a great person yourself, in any case, and you do not need to lord it over others, in order to prove your greatness.”

“Several walnuts grew in the park, though none were very close. She went to look at the shell- but looked with great astonishment. There was a baby in it.”

“Maria was not the kind of person who bore malice for injuries, and she was certainly not the kind of kidnapper who habitually stole babies from their heartbroken mothers, for the mere cynical pleasure of hearing them scream.”

“Cook, if you are ever captured by pirates, or surrounded by Indians, or if you should fall into the sea and be chased by a shark, I will see to it that this day’s work is not forgotten, if it costs me the last drop of my blood.”