Gilbert Parker Quotes (27 Quotes)

It's the people who try to be clever who never are; the people who are clever never think of trying to be.

It must be remembered that the sea is a great breeder of friendship. Two men who have known each other for twenty years find that twenty days at sea bring them nearer than ever they were before, or else estrange them.

There is no refuge from memory and remorse in this world. The spirits of our foolish deeds haunt us, with or without repentance.

It is not the broken heart that kills, but broken pride, monseigneur.

Memory is man's greatest friend and worst enemy.

Nothing is so unproductive as the law. It is expensive whether you win or lose.

He was of those who hypnotize themselves, who glow with self-creation, who flower and bloom without pollen.

There is no influence like the influence of habit.

For when a child is born the mother also is born again.

. . . they had courage without which, men are as the standing straw in an unreaped field in winter but having become like the hooded pine, that keepeth green in frost, and hath the bounding blood in all its icy branches.

She belongs to a race of delightful women, who never do any harm, whom everybody calls good, and who are very severe on those who do not pretend to be good.

There was no tragedy in his death -death is a magnificent ally it untangles knots.

She was beginning to understand that evil is not absolute, and that good is often an occasion more than a condition.

There's no credit in not doing what you don't want to do. There's no virtue in not falling, when you're not tempted.

Every man should have laws of his own, I should think; commandments of his own, for every man has a different set of circumstances wherein to work - or worry.

The real business of life is trying to understand each other.

Imagination is at the root of much that passes for love.

Love knows not distance; it hath no continent; its eyes are for the stars.

War is cruelty, and none can make it gentle.

Being a man of very few ideas, he cherished those he had with an exaggerated care.

In all secrets there is a kind of guilt, however beautiful or joyful they may be, or for what good end they may be set to serve. Secrecy means evasion, and evasion means a problem to the moral mind.

But paying is part of the game of life: it is the joy of buying that we crave.

Every shot that kills ricochets.

Man is born in a day, and he dies in a day, and the thing is easily over; but to have a sick heart for three-fourths of one's lifetime is simply to have death renewed every morning; and life at that price is not worth living.

He knew the lie of silence to be as evil as the lie of speech.

Tomorrow is no man's gift.

He came by a leap to the goal of purpose, not by the toilsome steps of reason. On the instant his headlong spirit declared his purpose: this was the one being for him in all the world: at this altar he would light a lamp of devotion, and keep it burning forever.