Gertrude Stein famous quotes

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Inspirational #Knowledge #Technology

Any time is the time to make a poem.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Poetry

Why should a sequence of words be anything but a pleasure?
-- Gertrude Stein

#Pleasure #Should

It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself.
-- Gertrude Stein

#History #Doe #Soothing

Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Inspirational #Women #Literature

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Time #Women #Philosophical

You will write if you will write without thinking of the result in terms of a result, but think of the writing in terms of discovery, which is to say that creation must take place between the pen and the paper, not before in a thought or afterwards in a recasting... It will come if it is there and if you will let it come.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Writing #Thinking #Discovery

After all everybody, that is, everybody who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. That is why writers have to have two countries, the one where they belong and the one in which they live really. The second one is romantic, is is separate from themselves, it is not real but it is really there.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Country #Real #Writing

We are always the same age inside.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Happy Birthday #Confidence #Positive Thinking

It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business
-- Gertrude Stein

#Important

Ladies there is no neutral position for us to assume.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Assuming #Position

One does not get better but different and older and that is always a pleasure.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Maturity #Get Better #Doe

America is my country and Paris is my hometown.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Country #America #Paris

Coffee is real good when you drink it gives you time to think. It's a lot more than just a drink; it's something happening. Not as in hip, but like an event, a place to be, but not like a location, but like somewhere within yourself. It gives you time, but not actual hours or minutes, but a chance to be, like be yourself, and have a second cup.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Being Yourself #Real #Coffee

You have to know what you want to get it.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Inspirational #Goal #Want

You look ridiculous if you dance You look ridiculous if you don't dance So you might as well dance.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Looks #Might #Ridiculous

Whoever said money can't buy happiness didn't know where to shop
-- Gertrude Stein

#Funny #Money #Saving

Money is always there but the pockets change.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Money #Pockets

I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Portraits #Literature #Mouths

I have declared that patience is never more than patient. I too have declared, that I who am not patient am patient.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Patience #Literature #Patient

You have to know what you want. And if it seems to take you off the track, don't hold back, because perhaps that is instinctively where you want to be. And if you hold back and try to be always where you have been before, you will go dry.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Inspirational #Track #Vision

A diary means yes indeed.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Mean #Diaries #Literature

Every adolescent has that dream every century has that dream every revolutionary has that dream, to destroy the family.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Dream #Literature #Revolutionary

In France one must adapt oneself to the fragrance of a urinal.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Literature #France #Fragrance

If you knew it all it would not be creation but dictation.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Creation

But the problem is that when I go around and speak on campuses, I still don't get young men standing up and saying, 'How can I combine career and family?'
-- Gertrude Stein

#Men #Careers #Problem

An audience is always warming but it must never be necessary to your work.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Literature #Audience

It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realise the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Funny #Strong #Men

There is no there there.
-- Gertrude Stein

One must dare to be happy.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Dare

Literature - creative literature - unconcerned with sex, is inconceivable.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Sex #Writing #Creative

Silent gratitude isn't very much to anyone.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Inspirational #Motivational #Gratitude

Generally speaking, everyone is more interesting doing nothing than doing anything.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Interesting #Literature #Doing Nothing

Let me listen to me and not to them.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Self Esteem #Healing #Let Me

A very important thing is not to make up your mind that you are any one thing.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Mind #Important #Powerful Women

Every day is a renewal, every morning the daily miracle. This joy you feel is life.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Morning #Joy #Miracle

Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Believe #Air #Literature

I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Exciting #Sentences

Considering how dangerous everything is, nothing is really very frightening.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Inspiring #Fear #Scary

I am I because my little dog knows me.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Friendship #Dog #Littles

You are so afraid of losing your moral sense that you are not willing to take it through anything more dangerous than a mud-puddle.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Mud Puddles #Losing #Moral

Anything one does every day is important and imposing and anywhere one lives is interesting and beautiful.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Life #Happiness #Beautiful

You are extraordinary within your limits, but your limits are extraordinary!
-- Gertrude Stein

#Limits #Extraordinary #Self Discovery

In the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Morning #Feelings #Evening

The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Science #Doe #Literature

I am writing for myself and strangers. This is the only way that I can do it.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Writing #Way #Stranger

It takes a heap of loafing to write a book.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Book #Writing

Is it worse to be scared than to be bored, that is the question.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Bored #Literature #Scared

A little artist has all the tragic unhappiness and the sorrows of a great artist and he is not a great artist.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Artist #Sorrow #Littles

If the communication is perfect, the words have life, and that is all there is to good writing, putting down on the paper words which dance and weep and make love and fight and kiss and perform miracles.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Communication #Writing #Kissing

The artist works by locating the world in himself
-- Gertrude Stein

#Artist #World

When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone. After all, human beings are like that.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Being Alone #Want #Wants To Be Alone

The only thing that is different from one time to another is what is seen and what is seen depends upon how everybody is doing everything.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Different

Writing and reading is to me synonymous with existing.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Reading #Writing

If you are looking down while you are walking it is better to walk up hill the ground is nearer.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Literature #Hills #Walks

I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned to it.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Views

There is no such thing as repetition. Only insistance.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Repetition

it is nice that nobody writes as they talk and that the printed language is different from the spoken otherwise you could not lose yourself in books and of course you do you completely do.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Nice #Book #Writing

In America ... who is to stop congress from spending too much money. They will not stop themselves, that is certain. Everybody has to think about that now. Who is to stop them.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Thinking #Government #America

August is a month when if it is hot weather it is really very hot.
-- Gertrude Stein

#August #Weather #Hot

Cooking like everything else in France is logic and fashion.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Fashion #Cooking #France

A creator is not in advance of his generation but he is the first of his contemporaries to be conscious of what is happening to his generation.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Generations #Firsts #Conscious

Some men and women are inquisitive about everything, they are always asking, if they see any one with anything they ask what is that thing, what is it you are carrying, what are you going to be doing with that thing, why have you that thing, where did you get that thing, how long will you have that thing, there are very many men and women who want to know about anything about everything.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Men #Long #Curiosity

There is no beginning to an end / But there is a beginning and an end / To beginning.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Ends #Beginnings And Endings

I cannot write too much upon how necessary it is to be completely conservative that is particularly traditional in order to be free.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Writing #Order #Too Much

The thing that is most interesting about government servants is that they believe what they are supposed to believe, they really do believe what they are supposed to believe.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Believe #Government #Interesting

I often think how celebrated I am. / It is difficult not to think how celebrated I am. / And if I think how celebrated I am / They know who know that I am new / That is I knew I know how celebrated I am / And after all it astonishes even me.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Thinking #Difficult

An audience is pleasant if you have it, it is flattering and flattering is agreeable always, but if you have an audience the being an audience is their business, they are the audience you are the writer, let each attend to their own business.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Flattering #Audience #Pleasant

Anyone who marries three girls from St Louis hasn't learned much.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Girl #Three

When I sleep I sleep and do not dream because it is as well that I am what I seem when I am in my bed and dream.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Dream #Sleep #Bed

What was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Writing #Oakland #Use

If a thing can be done, why do it?
-- Gertrude Stein

#Done

But then of course a philosophy is not the same thing as a style.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Philosophy #Style

Writer or painter god-parents are notoriously unreliable. That is, there is certain before long to be a cooling of friendship.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Long #Parent #Sentimental

Melanctha Herbert was always losing what she had in all the things she saw. Melanctha was always being left when she was not leaving others. Melanctha Herbert always loved too hard and much too often. She was always full with mystery and subtle movements and denials and vague distrusts and complicated disillusions. Then Melanctha would be sudden and impulsive and unbounded in some faith, and then she would suffer and be strong in her repression. Melanctha Herbert was always seeking rest and quiet and always she could only find new ways to be in trouble.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Strong #Leaving #Suffering

Even the propagandists on the radio find it very difficult to really say let alone believe that the world will be a happy place, of love and peace and plenty, and that the lion will lie down with the lamb and everybody will believe anybody.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Lying #Believe #World

Since the war nothing is so really frightening not the dark not alone in a room or anything on a road or a dog or a moon but two things, yes, indigestion and high places they are frightening.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Dog #War #Dark

I write for myself and strangers. The strangers, dear Readers, are an afterthought.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Writing #Stranger #Dear

The composition is the thing seen by everyone living in the living they are doing, they are the composing of the composition that at the time they are living is the composition of the time in which they are living.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Composing #Composition

Near a war is always not very near.
-- Gertrude Stein

#War

Too few is as many as too many.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Enough

Mostly every one is needing some one to be one listening to that one being one being one boasting.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Listening #Attention #Boast

there is art and there is official art, there always has been and there always will be.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Art

art is the pulse of a nation.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Art #Pulse #Art Is

It is very difficult in quarreling to be certain in either one what the other one is remembering. It is very often astonishing to each one quarreling to find out what the other one was remembering for quarreling. Mostly in quarreling not any one is finding out what the other one is remembering for quarreling, what the other one is remembering from quarreling.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Remember #Conflict #Certain

It is very funny about money. The thing that differentiates man from animals is money. All animals have the same emotions and the same ways as men. Anybody who has lots of animals around knows that. But the thing no animal can do is count, and the thing no animal can know is money.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Money #Animal #Men

I always wanted to be historical, from almost a baby on, I felt that way about it ...
-- Gertrude Stein

#Baby #Ambition #Historical

It is hard living down the tempers we are born with. We all begin well, for in our youth there is nothing we are more intolerant of than our own sins writ large in others and we fight them fiercely in ourselves; but we grow old and we see that these our sins are of all sins the really harmless ones to own, nay that they give a charm to any character, and so our struggle with them dies away.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Struggle #Character #Fighting

There are two kinds of men and women, those who have in them resisting as their way of winning those who have in them attacking as their way of winning ...
-- Gertrude Stein

#Success #Winning #Men

I understand you undertake to overthrow my undertaking.
-- Gertrude Stein

You have to learn to do everything, even to die.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Dying #Death And Dying

Human beings are interested in two things. They are interested in the Reality and interested in telling about it.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Reality #Two #Humans

How likely are definitions to be pleasurable.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Definitions

Ezra Pound still lives in a village and his world is a kind of village and people keep explaining things when they live in a village.... I have come not to mind if certain people live in villages and some of my friends still appear to live in villages and a village can be cozy as well as intuitive but must one really keep perpetually explaining and elucidating?
-- Gertrude Stein

#People #Mind #World

Would I if I could by pushing a button would I kill five thousand Chinamen if I could save my brother from anything. Well I was very fond of my brother and I could completely imagine his suffering and I replied that five thousand Chinamen was something I could not imagine and so it was not interesting. One has to remember that about imagination, that is when the world gets dull when everybody does not know what they can or what they cannot really imagine.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Brother #Imagination #Interesting

I am I because my little dog knows me but, creatively speaking the little dog knowing that you are you and your recognising that he knows, that is what destroys creation. That is what makes school.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Education #Dog #Creativity

It is very natural that every one who makes anything inside themselves that is makes it entirely out of what is in them does naturally have to have two civilizations. They have to have the civilization that makes them and the civilization that has nothing to do with them.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Creativity #Culture #Natural

... there is no point in being realistic about here and now, no use at all not any, and so it is not the nineteenth but the twentieth century, there is no realism now, life is not real it is not earnest, it is strange which is an entirely different matter.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Real #Different #Strange

One cannot come back too often to the question what is knowledge and to the answer knowledge is what one knows.... Knowledge is the thing you know and how can you know more than you do know.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Knowledge

If fishes were wishes the ocean would be all of our desire.
-- Gertrude Stein

#Ocean #Wish #Desire