Gertrude Stein Quotes
You'll be old and you never lived, and you kind of feel silly to lie down and die and to never have lived, to have been a job chaser and never have lived.
Gertrude Stein (Brewsie and Willie, 1946)
Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.
Gertrude Stein (Everybody's Autobiography, 1937)
A great deal of beauty is rapture. A circle is a necessity. Otherwise you would see no one. We each have our circle.
Gertrude Stein (Quoted in Last Operas and Plays, 1949)
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.
Gertrude Stein (Wars I Have Seen, 1945)
A nice war is a war where everybody who is heroic is a hero, and everybody more or less is a hero in a nice war. Now this war is not at all a nice war.
Gertrude Stein (Wars I Have Seen, 1945)
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.
Gertrude Stein (Everybody's Autobiography, 1937)
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.
Gertrude Stein (Everybody's Autobiography, 1937)
You look ridiculous if you dance
You look ridiculous if you don't dance
So you might as well dance.
Gertrude Stein
The whole duty of man consists in being reasonable and just... I am reasonable because I know the difference between understanding and not understanding and I am just because I have no opinion about things I don’t understand.
Gertrude Stein (Quoted in Things As They Are, 1950)
The idea of enemies is awful it makes one stop remembering eternity and the fear of death. That is what enemies are. Possessions are the same as enemies only less so, they too make one forget eternity and the fear of death.
Gertrude Stein (Wars I Have Seen, 1945)
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.
Gertrude Stein (Wars I Have Seen, 1945)
