{"author":"T.H. White","author_id":"T.H.+White","total_quotes":62,"quotes":[{"text":"He caught a glimpse of that extraordinary faculty in man, that strange, altruistic, rare, and obstinate decency which will make writers or scientists maintain their truths at the risk of death. Eppur si muove, Galileo was to say; it moves all the same. They were to be in a position to burn him if he would go on with it, with his preposterous nonsense about the earth moving round the sun, but he was to continue with the sublime assertion because there was something which he valued more than himself. The Truth. To recognize and to acknowledge What Is. That was the thing which man could do, which his English could do, his beloved, his sleeping, his now defenceless English. They might be stupid, ferocious, unpolitical, almost hopeless. But here and there, oh so seldome, oh so rare, oh so glorious, there were those all the same who would face the rack, the executioner, and even utter extinction, in the cause of something greater than themselves. Truth, that strange thing, the jest of Pilate's. Many stupid young men had thought they were dying for it, and many would continue to die for it, perhaps for a thousand years. They did not have to be right about their truth, as Galileo was to be. It was enough that they, the few and martyred, should establish a greatness, a thing above the sum of all they ignorantly had.","author":"T.H. White","tags":["humans","integrity","optimism","truth"],"id":2189,"author_id":"T.H.+White"},{"text":"It has to be admitted that starving nations never seem to be quite so starving that they cannot afford to have far more expensive armaments than anybody else.","author":"T.H. White","tags":["geopolitics","nations","starvation","war","weaponry"],"id":12650,"author_id":"T.H.+White"},{"text":"Kings can only use their best tools.","author":"T.H. White","tags":["discipleship","softhearted","submission"],"id":20657,"author_id":"T.H.+White"},{"text":"Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness. Unfortunately the happiness is there. There is always the chance (about eight hundred and fifty to one) that another heart will come to mine. I can't help hoping, and keeping faith, and loving beauty. Quite frequently I am not so miserable as it would be wise to be.","author":"T.H. White","tags":["beauty","faith","happiness","hope","life","living","love","misery","pain","positivity","stoicism"],"id":26770,"author_id":"T.H.+White"},{"text":"At this the Wart's eyes grew rounder and rounder, until they were about as big as the owl's who was sitting on his shoulder, and his face got redder and redder, and a breath seemed to gather itself beneath his heart.","author":"T.H. White","tags":["beautiful","descriptive"],"id":31537,"author_id":"T.H.+White"},{"text":"Grown-ups have developed an unpleasant habit of comforting themselves for their degradation by pretending that children are childish.","author":"T.H. White","tags":["innocence","maturity","youth"],"id":31937,"author_id":"T.H.+White"},{"text":"Perhaps man was neither good nor bad, was only a machine in an insensate universe--his courage no more than a reflex to danger, like the automatic jump at the pin-prick. Perhaps there were no virtues, unless jumping at pin-pricks was a virtue, and humanity only a mechanical donkey led on by the iron carrot of love, through the pointless treadmill of reproduction.","author":"T.H. White","tags":["good-and-evil","meaninglessness","the-absurd","virtues"],"id":33659,"author_id":"T.H.+White"},{"text":"We have invented a moral sense which is rotting now that we can't give it employment, and when a moral sense begins to rot, it is worse than when you had none. I suppose that all endeavors which are directed to a purely worldly end, as my precious civilization was, contain within themselves the germs of their own corruption.","author":"T.H. White","tags":["legalism","pride","spiritual-warfare"],"id":54961,"author_id":"T.H.+White"},{"text":"Now, in their love, which was stronger, there were the seeds of hatred and fear and confusion growing at the same time: for love can exist with hatred, each preying on the other, and this is what gives it its greatest fury.","author":"T.H. White","tags":["hatred"],"id":64410,"author_id":"T.H.+White"},{"text":"Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness.","author":"T.H. White","tags":["cynicism","dichotomy","happiness","pain","stoicism"],"id":79383,"author_id":"T.H.+White"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":62,"pages":7,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}