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T.H. White Quotes

T.H. White Quotes

Enjoy the top 186 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by T.H. White.

“Elaine had done the ungraceful thing as usual. Guenever, in similar circumstances, would have been sure to grow pale and interesting—but Elaine had only grown plump.”
— T.H. White —

“If people reach perfection they vanish, you know.”

— T.H. White

“Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance.”

— T.H. White

Those who lived by the sword were forced to die by it.

— T.H. White

I can imagine nothing more terrifying than an Eternity filled with men who were all the same. The only thing which has made life bearable ... has been the diversity of creatures on the surface of the globe.

— T.H. White

“It is so fatally easy to make young children believe that they are horrible.”

— T.H. White

“It is a pity that there are no big creatures to prey on humanity. If there were enough dragons and rocs, perhaps mankind would turn its might against them. Unfortunately man is preyed upon by microbes, which are too small to be appreciated.”

— T.H. White

Love is a trick played on us by the forces of evolution. Pleasure is the bait laid down by the same. There is only power. Power is of the individual mind but the mind's power is not enough. Power of the body decides everything in the end and only might is right.

— T.H. White

“And do you know another thing, Arthur? Life is too bitter already, without territories and wars and noble feuds.”

— T.H. White

“People commit suicide through weakness, not through strength.”

— T.H. White

“Neither force, nor argument, nor opinion," said Merlyn with the deepest sincerity, "are thinking. Argument is only a display of mental force, a sort of fencing with points in order to gain a victory, not for truth. Opinions are the blind alleys of lazy or of stupid men, who are unable to think. If ever a true politician really thinks a subject out dispassionately, even Homo stultus will be compelled to accept his findings in the end. Opinion can never stand beside truth. At present, however, Homo impoliticus is content either to argue with opinions or to fight with his fists, instead of waiting for the truth in his head. It will take a million years, before the mass of men can be called political animals.”

— T.H. White

“Unfortunately we have tried to establish Right by Might, and you just can't do that”

— T.H. White

“I think I ought to have some eddication,"said the Wart, "I can't think of anything to do.”

— T.H. White

He thought himself awake when he was already asleep. He saw the stars above his face, whirling on their silent and sleepless axis, and the leaves of the trees rustling against them, and he heard small changes in the grass. These little noises of footsteps and soft-fringed wing-beats and stealthy bellies drawn over the grass blades or rattling against the bracken at first frightened or interested him, so that he moved to see what they were (but never saw), then soothed him, so that he no longer cared to see what they were but trusted them to be themselves, and finally left him altogether as he swam down deeper and deeper, nuzzling into the scented turf, into the warm ground, into the unending waters under the earth.

— T.H. White

He felt in his heart cruelty and cowardice, the things which made him brave and kind.

— T.H. White

Wars are never fought for one reason," he said. "They are fought for dozens of reasons, in a muddle.

— T.H. White

I can see that you spoke in ignorance, and I bitterly regret that I should have been so petty as to take offence where none was intended.

— T.H. White

“I know hardly anything about Galahad except that everybody dislikes him."
"Dislikes him?"
"They complain about him being inhuman."
Lancelot considered his cup.
"He is inhuman," he said at last. "But why should he be human? Are angels supposed to be human?”

— T.H. White

“It is difficult to write about a real person.”

— T.H. White

Merlin: "Grown-ups have developed an unpleasant habit lately, I notice, of comforting themselves for their degradation by pretending that children are childish. I trust we are free of this?"
Arthur: "Everybody knows that children are more intelligent than their parents."
Merlin: "You and I know it, but the people who are going to read this book do not.
Our readers of that time ( ... ) have exactly three ideas in their magnificent noodles. The first is that the human species is superior to others. The second, that the twentieth century is superior to other centuries. And the third, that human adults of the twentieth century are superior to their young. ( ... )

— T.H. White

“It was Christmas night, the eve of the Boxing Day Meet. You must remember that this was in the old Merry England of Gramarye, when the rosy barons ate with their fingers, and had peacocks served before them with all their tail feathers streaming, or boars' heads with the tusks stuck in again-when there was no unemployment because there were too few people to be unemployed-when the forests rang with knights walloping each other on the helm, and the unicorns in the wintry moonlight stamped with their silver feet and snorted their noble breaths of blue upon the frozen air. Such marvels were great and comfortable ones. But in the Old England there was a greater marvel still. The weather behaved itself.”

— T.H. White

Jenny, all my life I have wanted to do miracles. I have wanted to be holy. I suppose it was ambition or pride or some other unworthy thing. It was not enough for me to conquer the world
I wanted to conquer heaven too.

— T.H. White

“Oh, what a lovely owl!" Cried the Wart.
But when he went up to it and held out his hand, the owl grew half as tall again, stood up as stiff as a poker, closed its eyes so that there was only the smallest slit to peep through - as you are in the habit of doing when told to shut your eyes at hide-and-seek - and said in a doubtful voice
"There is no owl."
Then it shut its eyes entirely and looked the other way.
"It is only a boy," said Merlyn.
"There is no boy," said the owl hopefully, without turning round.”

— T.H. White

“The race will find that capitalists and communists modify themselves so much during the ages that they end by being indistinguishable as democrats ...”

— T.H. White

“Elaine had done the ungraceful thing as usual. Guenever, in similar circumstances, would have been sure to grow pale and interesting-but Elaine had only grown plump.”

— T.H. White

“These marvels were great and comfortable ones, but in the old England there was a greater still. The weather behaved itself.
In the spring all the little flowers came out obediently in the meads, and the dew sparkled, and the birds sang; in the summer it was beautifully hot for no less than four months, and, if it did rain just enough for agricultural purposes, they managed to arrange it so that it rained while you were in bed; in the autumn the leaves flamed and rattled before the west winds, tempering their sad adieu with glory; and in the winter, which was confined by statute to two months, the snow lay evenly, three feet thick, but never turned into slush.”

— T.H. White

“It happened like this in the world. Old things lost their grip and dropped away; not always because they were bad things, but sometimes because the new things were more bad, and stronger.”

— T.H. White

“He was standing in the Inner Court, shouting for his enemy. When Guenever saw him, and he saw her, the electric message went between their eyes before they spoke a word. It was as if Elaine and the whole Quest for the Grail had never been. So far as we can make it out, she had accepted her defeat. He must have seen in her eyes that she had given in to him, that she was prepared to leave him to be himself-to love God, and to do whatever he pleased-so long as he was only Lancelot. she was serene and sane again. she had renounced her possessive madness and was joyful to see him living, whatever he did. They were young creatures-the same creatures whose eyes had met with the almost forgotten click of magnets in the smoky Hall of Camelot so long ago. And, in truly yielding, she had won the battle by mistake.”

— T.H. White

“The snow-haired Uncle Dap, so old as to be absolutely fabulous, was trying to jump over his walking-stick.”

— T.H. White

You know that eye-to-eye recognition, when two people look deeply into each other's pupils, and burrow to the soul? It usually comes before love. I mean the clear, deep, milk-eyed recognition expressed by the poet Donne. Their eyebeams twisted and did thread their eyes upon a double string. My father recognized that the Professor was a Troll, and the Professor recognized my father's recognition. Both of them knew that the Professor had eaten his wife. - The Troll

— T.H. White

Grown-ups have developed an unpleasant habit of comforting themselves for their degradation by pretending that children are childish.

— T.H. White

I am writing a treatise just now" said the badger, coughing diffidently to show that he was absolutely set on explaining it, "which is to point out why Man has become the master of the animals. Perhaps you would like to hear it? It's for my doctor's degree you know," he added hastily, before Wart could protest. He got few chances of reading his treatise to anybody, so he could not bear to let the opportunity slip by.

— T.H. White

“People will do the basest things on account of their so-called honor.”

— T.H. White

“In going to sleep he had learned to vanquish light, and now the light could not rewake him.”

— T.H. White

He began to see why Merlyn had always clowned on purpose. It had been a means of helping people to learn in a happy way.

— T.H. White

“Wherever they went and wherever they slept, the east wind whistled in the reeds, and the geese went over high in the starlight, honking at the stars.”

— T.H. White

“Any one war seems rooted in its antecedents.”

— T.H. White

Who said that?" asked Sir Grummore.
"But the sword said it, like I tell you."
"Talkative weapon," remarked Sir Grummore skeptically.

— T.H. White

At the same time so distant that unutterable thoughts of space and eternity would baffle themselves in his sighing breast, and he would imagine to himself how he was falling upward higher and higher among them, never reaching, never ending, leaving and losing everything in the tranquil speed of space.

— T.H. White

“Merlyn took the Wart's hand and said kindly, You are young, and do not understand these things. But you will learn that owls are the most courteous, single-hearted and faithful creatures living. You must never be familiar, rude or vulgar with them, or make them look ridiculous. Their mother is Athene, the goddess of wisdom, and, although they are often ready to play the buffoon to amuse you, such conduct is the prerogative of the truly wise. No owl can possibly be called Archie.”

— T.H. White

“Wart draggled off to the tower room, where Merlyn was busy knitting himself a woollen night-cap for the winter. "I cast off two together at every other line," said the magician, "but for some reason it seems to end too sharply. Like an onion. It is the turning of the heel that does one, every time.”

— T.H. White

“It is like ... I don't know what. Not like silk. It is more like pouring water, only there is something cloudy about it too. The clouds are made of water, aren't they? Is it a pale mist, or a winter sea, or a waterfall, or a hayrick in the frost? Yes, it is a hayrick, deep and soft and full of scent.”

— T.H. White

War is like a fire, Agnes. One man may start it, but it will spread all over. It is not about any one thing in particular.

— T.H. White

“I would recommend a solo flight to all prospective suicides. It tends to make clear the issue of whether one enjoys being alive or not.”

— T.H. White

“He fancied himself on his humanity towards animals, as so many people do who are inhuman to their fellow men ...”