Nobody knows what I am trying to do but I do and I know when I succeed.
GERTRUDE STEINYou’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.
More Gertrude Stein Quotes
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From the very nature of progress, all ages must be transitional.
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It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for the future, none at all. It certainly is extraordinary, but it is certainly true.
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We are always the same age inside.
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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.
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There is too much fathering going on just now and there is no doubt about it fathers are depressing.
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A great deal of beauty is rapture. A circle is a necessity. Otherwise you would see no one. We each have our circle.
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The first hope of a painter who feels hopeful about painting is the hope that the painting will move, that it will live outside its frame.
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I am writing for myself and strangers. This is the only way that I can do it.
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Art isn’t everything. It’s just about everything.
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War is never fatal but always lost. Always lost.
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Writer or painter god-parents are notoriously unreliable. That is, there is certain before long to be a cooling of friendship.
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You are brilliant and subtle if you come from Iowa and really strange and you live as you live and you are always very well taken care of if you come from Iowa.
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Ladies there is no neutral position for us to assume.
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A creator is so completely contemporary that he has the appearance of being ahead of his generation.
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If you knew it all it would not be creation but dictation.
GERTRUDE STEIN






