Gertrude Stein

“It is very easy to love alone.”

“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.”

“A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.”

“The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it.”

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

“Money is always there but the pockets change it is not in the same pockets after a change, and that is all there is to say about money.”

“There is too much fathering going on just now and there is no doubt about it fathers are depressing.”

“It is natural to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes to that siren until she allures us to our death.”

“Very likely education does not make very much difference.”

“A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself.”

“It is extraordinary that when you are acquainted with a whole family you can forget about them.”

“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?'”

“Every adolescent has that dream every century has that dream every revolutionary has that dream, to destroy the family.”

“Before the flowers of friendship faded friendship faded.”

“It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realise the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger.”

“It is funny the two things most men are proudest of is the thing that any man can do and doing does in the same way, that is being drunk and being the father of their son.”

“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.”

“It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for the future, none at all. It certainly is extraordinary, but it is certainly true.”

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

“This is the lesson that history teaches: repetition.”

“History takes time. History makes memory.”

“Counting is the religion of this generation it is its hope and its salvation.”

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

“The thing that differentiates man from animals is money.”