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The Life of Katherine Mansfield

Reading Notes (1905–1907)

Reading Notes (1905–1907)

“To be premature is to be perfect.” —O.W.

“Greek dress was in its essence inartistic. Nothing should reveal the body but itself.” —O.W.

“Genius in a woman is the mystic laurel of Apollo springing from the soft breast of Daphne. It hastens the growing and sometimes breaks the heart from which it springs.” —M.C.

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

“A man who speaks effectively through music is compelled to something more difficult than parliamentary eloquence.” —G.E.

“Any great achievement in acting or in music grows with the growth. Whenever an artist has been able to say ‘I came, I saw, I conquered,’ it has been at the end of patient practice. Genius is at first little more than a great capacity for receiving (discipline). Your muscles, your whole frame must go like a watch true, true, true, true as a hair.” —G.E.

“If any one should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I feel it could not otherwise be explained than by making answer, ‘Because it was he; because it was I’.” —Montaigne.

“The strongest man is he who stands most alone.” —Henrik Ibsen.

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“Happy people are never brilliant. It implies friction.” —K.M.

“It is not naturally or generally, the happy who are the most anxious for a prolongation of the present life or for a life hereafter; it is those who have never been happy.” —J.S.M.

“… it is no unnatural part of the idea of a happy life, that life itself is to be laid down, after the best that it can give has been fully enjoyed through a long lapse of time; when all its pleasures, like those of benevolence, are familiar, and nothing untasted or unknown is left to stimulate curiosity and keep up the desire of prolonged existence.” —J.S.M.

“Push everything as far as it will go.” —O.W.

“The old desire everything—the middle-aged believe everything—the young know everything.” —O.W.

“To love madly—perhaps is not wise—yet should you love madly—it is far wiser than not to love at all.” —M.M.

“People who learn only from experience do not allow for intuition.” —A.H.H.

“No life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested.” —O.W.

“We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices.” —O.W.

“If you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it.” —O.W.

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.” —O.W.

“Conscience and cowardice are the same things. Conscience is the trade mark of the firm. That is all.” —O.W.

“To realise one's nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for.” —O.W.