I. A. R. Wylie Quotes

The days that I keep my gratitude higher than my expectations, I have really good days.

First deal with your own tears; tomorrow do something about acid rain.

Material blessings, when they pay beyond the category of need, are weirdly fruitful of headache.

In masks outrageous and austere The years go by in single file; But none has merited my fear, And none has quite escaped my smile.

One good teacher in a lifetime may sometimes change a delinquent into a solid citizen.

When strawberries go begging, and the sleek Blue plums lie open to the blackbird's beak, We shall live well--we shall live very well.

Buddha was not a Christian, but Jesus would have made a good Buddhist.

It's not any more unusual to be born twice than it is to be born once.

If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve.

I am better able to imagine hell than heaven; it is my inheritance, I suppose.

Her expression falls slightly as she senses that my walls are up and she's not nearly strong enough to climb over. Not even today when she is leukaemia's version of Superwoman.

My lord, adjudge my strength, and set me where I bear a little more than I can bear.

Poverty isn't being broke; poverty is never having enough.

Ignorance is not bliss — it is oblivion. Determined ignorance is the hastiest kind of oblivion.

If you would keep your soul From spotted sight or sound, Live like the velvet mole; Go burrow underground.

I believe I'll take off my colors for awhile / And just kick back and sing some blues.

I shall lie folded like a saint, Lapped in a scented linen sheet, On a bedstead striped with bright-blue paint, Narrow and cold and neat.

Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover; A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year; The spring begins before the winter's over.

The first gold star a child gets in school for the mere performance of a needful task is its first lesson in graft.

Education is not a function of any church or even of a city or a state; it is a function of all mankind.

Superiority and inferiority are individual, not racial or national.

Man's destiny lies half within himself, half without. To advance in either half at the expense of the other is literally insane.

If any have a stone to throw It is not I, ever or now.

Common man has at long last got himself so far out of gear with nature and his environment that he is beginning to see the shape of extinction, whether he recognizes it as such or not.

The businessmen have corrupted liberty by trying to propose it as a material quality.

The day when we plan seriously to start living either never comes or it comes too late.

This is how it feels to die: It starts from outside and works its way in.

You can't automate in the arts. Since the sixteenth century there has been no change in the number of people necessary to produce Hamlet.

Unconsciously we grow to look upon the sick as people of another world.

Our history is every human history; a black and gory business, with more scoundrels than wise men at the lead, and more louts than both put together to cheer and follow.

I don't really believe in targets, because my next target is to beat Stoke City

I don't like people--much. This kind, I mean. And they don't like me at all, as a rule. Maybe the latter explains the former.

Not to understand the doer is to have no certain knowledge of what has been done, or why it was undertaken

So every artist and would-be artist makes this same phrase: 'I knew, I never got it said.

There is no advance without strife.

God must hate common people, because he made them so common.

Absolute dominion of a powerful people by a minority always produces national aggression.

My heart jumps out of its cage to see what the fuss is about. Damn thing. Always so hopeful, but my voice hides it well.

The mealy look of men today is the result of momism and so is the pinched and baffled fury in the eyes of womankind.

Another of our highly prized virtues is fidelity. We are immensely pleased with ourselves when we are faithful.

The Sabbath is the link between the paradise which has passed away and the paradise which is yet to come.

I'm a books person. Yes, I have a Kindle. I used it for an hour and a half and put it in the closet.

Unless you're a terribly bad writer, you are never going to have too many readers.

Marriage is to family what legs are to a table.

There are all kinds of ways of being unfaithful, not the worst of them with your body.

Listening is one of the lesser-known skills that mistresses offer.

Marriage is the agreement to let a family happen.

Most people I know feel that life would be complete if they could just lose ten pounds.

I bear a little more than I can bear.

Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones There's something in this richness that I hate. I love the look, austere, immaculate, Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones.