We are closer to the ants than to the butterflies. Very few people can endure much leisure. Gerald Brenan More Quotes by Gerald Brenan More Quotes From Gerald Brenan Everyone is a bore to someone. That is unimportant. The thing to avoid is being a bore to oneself. Gerald Brenan bores boredom oneself Those who have money think that the most important thing in the world is love. The poor know it is money. Gerald Brenan words-of-wisdom business thinking Wisdom is keeping a sense of fallibility of all our views and opinions. Gerald Brenan opinion wisdom views In a happy marriage it is the wife who provides the climate, the husband the landscape. Gerald Brenan wedding anniversary husband Old age takes away from us what we have inherited and gives us what we have earned. Gerald Brenan aging age giving It is by sitting down to write every morning that he becomes a writer. Those who do not do this remain amateurs. Gerald Brenan writing attitude morning We confess our bad qualities to others out of fear of appearing naive or ridiculous by not being aware of them. Gerald Brenan bad-qualities ridiculous quality One road to happiness is to cultivate curiosity about everything. Not only about people but about subjects, not only about the arts but about history and foreign customs. Not only about countries and cities, but about plants and animals. Not only about lichened rocks and curious markings on the bark of trees, but about stars and atoms. Not only about your friends but about that strange labyrinth we inhabit which we call ourselves. Then, if we do that, we will never suffer a moment's boredom. Gerald Brenan happy happiness country One of the marks of a great poet is that he creates his own family of words and teaches them to live together in harmony and to help one another. Gerald Brenan harmony together helping When I write a page that reads badly I know that it is myself who has written it. When it reads well it has come through from somewhere else. Gerald Brenan pages somewhere-else writing You generally hear that what a man doesn't know doesn't hurt him, but in business what a man doesn't know does hurt. Gerald Brenan business hurt knowledge Intellectuals are people who believe that ideas are of more importance than values. That is to say, their own ideas and other people's values. Gerald Brenan believe people ideas Every writer and artist wonders what in the world people of other professions can find to live for. Gerald Brenan artist people world Middle age snuffs out more talent than even wars or sudden death. Gerald Brenan age war death The cliche is dead poetry. Gerald Brenan cliche A bad memory is the mother of invention. Gerald Brenan invention mother memories We should all live as if we were never going to die, for it is the deaths of our friends that hurt us, not our own. Gerald Brenan should hurt death We soon cease to feel the grief at the deaths of our friends, yet we continue to the end of our lives to miss them. They are still with us in their absence. Gerald Brenan grief missing absence As Coleridge said, "We receive but what we give." The happy life is a life of continual generosity in which we go out to meet and acclaim the world. Gerald Brenan generosity giving happy-life The more we feel sorry for ourselves, the less sorry others will feel for us. People don't waste their small store of sympathy on those who can provide it so richly for themselves. Gerald Brenan sorry sympathy people
