Quotes By Gertrude Stein

The deepest thing in any one is the conviction of the bad luck that follows boasting.

Supposing everyone lived at one time what would they say. They would observe that stringing string beans is universal.

But the problem is that when I go around and speak on campuses, I still don't get young men standing up and saying, 'How can I combine career and family?'

In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. That is what makes America what it is.

It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself.

Do you know because I tell you so, or do you know, do you know.

An audience is always warming but it must never be necessary to your work.

A house in the country is not the same as a country house.

Americans are very friendly and very suspicious, that is what Americans are and that is what always upsets the foreigner, who deals with them, they are so friendly how can they be so suspicious they are so suspicious how can they be so friendly but they just are.

Very likely education does not make very much difference.

Remarks are not literature.

If you can do it then why do it?

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.

What is music. A passion for colonies not a love of country.

One does not get better but different and older and that is always a pleasure.

I have declared that patience is never more than patient. I too have declared, that I who am not patient am patient.

Let me listen to me and not to them.

Oh, I wish I were a miser; being a miser must be so occupying.

Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.

When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone. After all, human beings are like that.

I know what Germans are. They are a funny people. They are always choosing someone to lead them in a direction which they do not want to go.

Everybody thinks that this civilization has lasted a very long time but it really does take very few grandfathers' granddaughters to take us back to the dark ages.

It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business.

War is never fatal but always lost. Always lost.

Romance is everything.

What is marriage, is marriage protection or religion, is marriage renunciation or abundance, is marriage a stepping-stone or an end. What is marriage.

There is no real reality to a really imagined life any more.

Literature - creative literature - unconcerned with sex, is inconceivable.

It is natural not to care about a sister certainly not when she is four years older and grinds her teeth at night.

I think the reason I am important is that I know everything.