Penelope Fitzgerald Quotes

#1. A word of advice. If, as a young man, student, you are tormented by a desire for women, it is best to get out into the fresh air as much as possible.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#2. If there's even one person who might be hurt by a decision, you should never make it.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#3. She had a kind heart, though that is not of much use when it comes to the matter of self-preservation.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#4. Behind their dark glass, the mad own nothing.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#5. An unjust punishment is never forgotten.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#6. Open the doors, the Russians say, here comes trouble. On

Penelope Fitzgerald

#7. Surely you have to succeed, if you give everything you have.'
'I don't see why. Everyone has to give everything they have eventually. They have to die. Dying can't be called a success.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#8. Duty is what no-one else will do at the moment.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#9. Helping other people is a drug so dangerous that there is no cure short of total abstention.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#10. The body, then, has a mind of its own. It must follow, then, that the Mind has a body of its own, even if it's like nothing that we can see around us, or have ever seen.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#11. Courage and endurance are useless of they are never tested.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#12. It's very good for an idea to be commonplace. The important thing is that a new idea should develop out of what is already there so that it soon becomes an old acquaintance. Old acquaintances aren't by any means always welcome, but at least one can't be mistaken as to who or what they are.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#13. On the whole, I think you should write biographies of those you admire and respect, and novels about human beings who you think are sadly mistaken.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#14. But time given to wishing for what can't be is not only spent, but wasted, and for all that we waste we shall be accountable.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#15. After all, these people were born for joy, he thought.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#16. I have remained true to my deepest convictions. I mean the courage of those who are born to be defeated, the weaknesses of the strong, and the tragedy of misunderstandings and missed opportunities, which I have done my best to treat as comedy - for otherwise how can we manage to bear it?

Penelope Fitzgerald

#17. Have remained true to my deepest convictions, I mean to the courage of those who are born to be defeated, the weaknesses of the strong, and the tragedy of misunderstandings and missed opportunities, which I have done my best to

Penelope Fitzgerald

#18. What's to become of us? We can't go on like this."
"Yes, we can go on like this," said Cesare. "We can go on exactly like this for the rest of our lives.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#19. Experiences aren't given to us to be 'got over,' otherwise they would hardly be experiences.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#20. Human beings interested her so much that it must always be an advantage to meet another one.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#21. Algebra, like laudanum, deadens pain, Fritz wrote.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#22. Morality is seldom a safe guide for human conduct.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#23. If they don't depend on true evidence, scientists are no better than gossips.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#24. He was not trained in conservation - he was, after all, no more than an archaeologist - a digger!

Penelope Fitzgerald

#25. Courage and endurance are useless if they are never tested.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#26. There isn't one kind of happiness, there's all kinds. Decision is torment for anyone with imagination. When you decide, you multiply the things you might have done and now never can.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#27. I believe that people should write biographies only about people they love, or understand, or both. Novels, on the other hand, are often better if they're about people the writer doesn't like very much.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#28. Tilda cared nothing for the future, and had, as a result, a great capacity for happiness.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#29. Opportunity, after all, is only another word for temptation.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#30. But we weren't meant to live alone,' said Frank.
'Life makes its own corrections.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#31. It is interesting to note that everyone has a different take on the world, a different opinion, and given the same inputs have completely different outputs.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#32. Opening the shop gave her, every morning, the same feeling of promise and opportunity. The books stood as neatly ranged as Gipping's vegetables, ready for all comers.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#33. You can borrow my Blackbird, if you like,' said Ben. This was his new fountain pen, which troubled him. It was guaranteed not to leak but writers and schoolchildren knew better. Ben wished to be relieved of the responsibility of the Blackbird, without losing his own dignity.

Penelope Fitzgerald

#34. She was in love, as she quite saw, with a middle - aged man who said the same thing to all the girls, who had been a prince for an evening which he'd most likely forgotten already, who had given her a ring with a redcurrant in it and who cared, to the exclusion of all else, for his work.

Penelope Fitzgerald