Quotes by Katherine Mansfield

“To acknowledge the presence of fear is to give birth to failure.”

“A big bee, a golden furry fellow, crept into a freesia, and the delicate flower leaned over, swung, shook; and when the bee flew away it fluttered still as though it were laughing. Happy, careless ...”

“I am treating you as my friend, asking you to share my present minuses in the hope that I can ask you to share my future plusses.”

“Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others ... Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth."(Journal entry, 14 October 1922)”

“I do not know why I have such a fancy for this little caf. It's dirty and sad, sad. It's not as if it had anything to distinguish it from a hundred othersit hasn't; or as if the same strange types ...”

“I thought how true it was that the world was a delightful place if it were not for the people, and how more than true it was that people were not worth troubling about, and that wise men should set...”

“Everything about her was sweet, pale like honey. You would not have been surprised to see a bee caught in the tangles of that yellow hair.”

“Isn't life,' she stammered, 'isn't life--' But what life was she couldn't explain. No matter. He quite understood.'Isn't it, darling?' said Laurie.”

“Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must become Love. That is the mystery.”

“The mind I love most must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody fathomed the dep...”

“I sometimes wonder whether the act of surrender is not one of the greatest of all - the highest. It is one of the [most] difficult of all... You see it's so immensely complicated. It needs real hum...”

“Saw the sun rise. A lovely apricot sky with flames in it and then solemn pink. Heavens, how beautiful...I feel so full of love to-day after having seen the sun rise.”

“The truth is that every true admirer of the novels cherishes the happy thought that he alone - reading between the lines - has become the secret friend of their author.”

“I can never be perfectly certain whether Helen was got with child by Leonard Bast or by his fatal forgotten umbrella. All things considered, I think it must have been the umbrella.”

“Oh dear, I sometimes thinkwhatever would I do if anything happenedBut thinking's no good, is it, madam? Thinking won't help. When I find myself doing that, I say to myself, "come along, Ellen! Stop...”

“I love to close my eyes a moment and think of the land outside, white under the mingled snow and moonlight--the heaps of stones by the roadside white--snow in the furrows. Mon Dieu! How quiet and h...”

“Sleeping was her latest discovery. 'It's so wonderful. One simply shuts one's eyes, that's all. It's so delicious.”

“It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.”

“There were all her feelings for him, sharp and defined, one as true as the other. And there was the other, this hatred, just as real as the rest. She could have done her feelings up in little packe...”

“Ah, what happiness it is to be with people who are all happy, to press hands, press cheeks, smile into eyes.”