Taylor Caldwell famous quotes

A wise man distrusts his neighbor. A wiser man distrusts both his neighbor and himself. The wisest man of all distrusts his government.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Wise #Men #Neighbor

Don't let the past steal your present. This is the message of Christmas: We are never alone.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Holiday #Past #Messages

I am not alone at all, I thought. I was never alone at all. And that, of course, is the message of Christmas. We are never alone. Not when the night is darkest, the wind coldest, the world seemingly most indifferent. For this is still the time God chooses.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Family #Christmas #Night

I like animals because they are not consciously cruel and don't betray each other.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Betrayal #Animal #Betrayed

It is human nature to instinctively rebel at obscurity or ordinariness.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Rebel #Obscurity #Human Nature

Giving a phenomenon a label does not explain it.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Giving #Doe #Labels

I was never afraid of anything in the world except the dentist.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#World #Dentist

I am the skeptic of skeptics.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Skeptic

Corrupt citizens breed corrupt rulers, and it is the mob who finally decides when virtue shall die.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Citizens #Virtue #Rulers

Mankind adores its betrayers, and murders its saviors.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Murder #Mankind #Adore

An honest politician is either a hypocrite - or he is doomed.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Hypocrite #Honest #Politician

We, perhaps, have corrupted our children and our grandchildren by heedless affluence, by a lack of manliness, by giving the younger generation more money and liberty than their youth can handle, by indoctrinating them with sinister ideologies and false values, by permitting them, as young children, to indulge themselves in imprudence to superiors and defiance of duly constituted authority, by lack of prudent, swift punishment when the transgressed, by coddling and pampering them when they were children and protecting them from a very dangerous world
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Children #Parenting #Punishment

The American insanity for Loving Everybody is ruining my good temper and delivering my stomach to enormous bouts with acidity.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Insanity #Enormous #Stomach

I'm not that interested in people
-- Taylor Caldwell

#People

The nature of human beings never changes; it is immutable. The present generation of children and the present generation of young adults from the age of thirteen to eighteen is, therefore, no different from that of their great-great-grandparents. Political fads come and go; theories rise and fall; the scientific
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Children #Fall #Grandparent

We are not old unless we desire to be.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Beauty #Desire

I have anonymously helped many thousands
-- Taylor Caldwell

I've always enjoyed poor health
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Poor #Poor Health

My relatives used to laugh when I talked of being a writer.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Laughing #Comeback #Used

I am deeply convinced that happiness does not exist in this world
-- Taylor Caldwell

#World #Doe #This World

No woman has ever been an authentic genius of the stature of men, but that does not enrage me
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Men #Doe #Genius

I often reread books I have written
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Book

Though I am a Catholic, a professing one, I have serious doubts about the survival of the human personality after death.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Personality #Catholic #Doubt

If there is a God, then he was particularly harsh to me
-- Taylor Caldwell

#If There Is A God #Harsh

There is no solid satisfaction in any career for a woman like myself. There is no home, no true freedom, no hope, no joy, no expectation for tomorrow, no contentment. I would rather cook a meal for a man and bring him his slippers and feel myself in the protection of his arms than have all the citations and awards and honors I have received worldwide, including the Ribbon of Legion of Honor and my property and my bank accounts. They mean nothing to me. And I am only one among the millions of sad women like myself.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Women #Home #Mean

My childhood was appalling.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Childhood

But what was a body? Dust, dung, urine, itches. It was the light within which was important, and it was not significant if that light endured after death, or if the soul was blinded eternally in the endless night of the suspired flesh.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Night #Dust #Light

Contrary to general opinion, women are not so sentimental as men, but are much more hardheaded.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Men #Sentimental #Opinion

God's 'failures' are really man's failures ...
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Men

Animals do not betray; they do not exploit; they do not oppress; they do not enslave; they do not sin. They have their being, and their being is honest, and who can say this of man?
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Men #Animal #Honest

It is not always wise to appear singular.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Wise

Honest men live on charity in their age; the almshouses are full of men who never stole a copper penny. Honest men are the fools and the saints.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Men #Age #Charity

One, if one is sensible, blames government, not the servers of government, not those entangled in their governments.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Government #Blame #Server

Men who retain irony are not to be trusted. They can't always resist an impulse to tickle themselves.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Men #Irony #Impulse

Despair is sometimes the great energizer of the mind, though sometimes its flowering may be sterile.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Mind #Despair #May

Freedom was given to humanity by God. But, governments, if they can help it, never give freedom. They just hand out slavery with slogans.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Hands #Government #Giving

I shudder at the very thought of being born again into this world. Life to me . . . has been a monstrous, painful, agonizing affair, and the idea of repeating such an existence - even if better in a way - is horrifying to me. . . . I gratefully look forward to oblivion, but I must be sure of it.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Ideas #Looks #World

The human race is not very admirable. It was a big mistake of God’s,
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Mistake #Race #Bigs

Women's Lib? I couldn't stand it.
-- Taylor Caldwell

The world is a penal institution.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#World #Institutions

The stalwart soul has the will to live and is eager for the race.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Race #Soul #Stalwart

Tel Aviv appeals to me.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Appeals

Money? I lost all taste for it.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Taste #Lost

I am not convinced that there is such a thing as a soul
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Soul

My literary success meant nothing to me
-- Taylor Caldwell

At 8, I made a pact with God.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Made #Pact

Those who claim to have had happy lives seem to be silly fools.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Stupid #Silly #Happy Life

The very idea of carrying my memory into eternity devastated me, and I took refuge in atheism.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Memories #Ideas #Atheism

People are scared to death of dying. I am the opposite.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Opposites #People #Dying

I will ge glad to have done with this life forever.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Forever #Done #This Life

I wanted to acquire an education, work extremely hard and never deviate from my goal, to make it.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Goal #Wanted

I have always had a horror and detestation of poverty.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Poverty #Horror

The feeble soul merely whines and complains.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Soul #Complaining

If they can't do it in California, it can't be done anywhere.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#California #Done

If genetic memory or racial memory persists, is it possible that individual memory also exists from previous lives?
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Memories #Individual #Previous Life

Are we not all desperate one way or another?
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Way #Desperate

I have had four happy days in my life, and three of them turned out to be illusions.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Life #Inspire #Four

I have been the victim of heartless malice.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Heartless #Victim #Malice

Learning should be a joy and full of excitement. It is life's greatest adventure; it is an illustrated excursion into the minds of the noble and the learned.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Travel #Adventure #Joy

The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign hands should be curtailed, lest Rome fall.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Peace #War #Fall

In sleep, you are safe from the revolting mechanics of living and being a prey to outrageous fortune.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Sleep #Safe #Mechanic

I have been constantly betrayed and deceived all my life.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Betrayed #Deceived

Character, I am sure, lies in the genes.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Lying #Character #Genes

Even the most malignant gods would not continue to inflict life upon humanity, time without end.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Humanity #Ends

I gratefully look forward to oblivion, but I must be sure of it
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Looks #Oblivion

Obscurity can be a fire of ambition in those who have stalwart souls
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Ambition #Fire #Soul

It is inevitable, that eventually the people will demand absolute security from the state... And absolute security is absolute slavery.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#People #Demand #Slavery

My life has been tragic and disastrous since birth.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Birth #Tragic

If a nation has not God that nation must fall, but if a nation has God then all the powers of evil, and all the armies, cannot shake its foundations; no, not even if the whole world is arrayed against it.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Fall #Army #Evil

It is a stern fact of history that no nation that rushed to the abyss ever turned back. Not ever, in the long history of the world. We are now on the edge of the abyss. Can we, for the first time in history, turn back? It is up to you.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Long #World #Firsts

It is a waste of money to help those who show no desire to help themselves.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Money #Insightful #Desire

I never deviated from my grim determination to someday have all the money I needed and wanted.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Determination #Someday #Needed

'He is very ugly,' said his mother.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Mother #Ugly #Said

I am a Westerner of Westerners!
-- Taylor Caldwell

I have thought that I have seen ghosts on many occasions.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Ghost #Occasions

Reading, not just an escape, but an exercise in living...
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Reading #Exercise

The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Freedom #Work #Rome

. . . a statement that is repugnant to one's beliefs can be as true as one that is pleasurable.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Belief

The more wants a man has, the less freedom.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Men #Want

One of my grandsons used to insist, when he was only 3 or 4, that he had been born and had lived in India
-- Taylor Caldwell

#India #Born #Used

I converse with my dog through ESP
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Dog #Esp #My Dog

My dreams are all follies.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Dream #Folly

I have written two medical novels. I have never studied medicine, never seen an operation
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Medicine #Two #Medical