Quotes from Joyce Cary

To forgive is wisdom, to forget is genius. And easier. Because it's true. It's a new world every heart beat.

To forgive is wisdom, to forget is genius.

The truth is that life is hard and dangerous; that he who seeks his own happiness does not find it; that he who is weak must suffer; that he who demands love will be disappointed; that he who is greedy will not be fed; that he who seeks peace will find strife; that truth is only for the brave; that joy is only for him who does not fear to be alone; that life is only for the one who is not afraid to die.

Nothing like poetry when you lie awake at night. It keeps the old brain limber. It washes away the mud and sand that keeps on blocking up the bends. Like waves to make the pebbles dance on my old floors. And turn them into rubies and jacinths; or at any rate, good imitations.

I look at life as a gift of God. Now that he wants it back I have no right to complain.

It was as dark as the inside of a cabinet minister.

They can't give you all that, Mr Jimson,' said Walter, who was upset. 'It wouldn't be right. What would they give you seven years for?' 'Being Gulley Jimson,' I said, 'and getting away with it.

The Professor looked like a Protestant saint when the cannibal offered him the choice of taking six wives or being boiled alive. He wanted to mortify some flesh, but he didn't know which.

So evil is the brood of the slogans that the most splendid and noble battle cries, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, bred nothing but new and more cunning, more hypocritical despots, better organised murder, popular nationalism drunk with the conceit of hooligans, militarism as the tool of demagogues, hatred not to be assuaged by the blood of millions and a century of tears.

The concept, the label, is perpetually hiding from us all the nature of the real.

Politics is like navigation in a sea without charts, and wise men live the lives of pilgrims.

Religion is organized to satisfy and guide the soul - politics does the same thing for the body.

What is it in the actor, the stage, that casts so powerful a spell on the young imagination?

Remember I'm an artist. And you know what that means in a court of law. Next worst to an actress.

I look upon life as a gift from God. I did nothing to earn it. Now that the time is coming to give it back, I have no right to complain.

The principal fact of life is the free mind.

No doubt any connoisseur, any collector, some bored old millionaire when he shows off his treasures, is seeking in your praise the resurrection and the life.

The most effective teacher will always be biased, for the chief force in teaching is confidence and enthusiasm.

Life would die without poets, and democracy must have its spellbinders.

People don't use their eyes. They never see a bird, they see a sparrow. They never see a tree, they see a birch. They see concepts.

Religion is organized to satisfy and guide the soul - politics does the same thing for the body.

The will is never free - it is always attached to an object, a purpose. It is simply the engine in the car - it can't steer.

Love doesn't grow on trees like apples in Eden - it's something you have to make. And you must use your imagination too.

I look upon life as a gift from God. I did nothing to earn it. Now that the time is coming to give it back, I have no right to complain.