Quotes from Katherine Mansfield

I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.

Yes, my mother's death is a terrible sorrow to me. I feel - do you know what I mean - the silence of it so. She was more alive than anyone I have ever known.

But the more poetry one reads the more one longs to read!

Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change.

We can do whatever we wish to do provided our wish is strong enough. What do you want most to do? That's what I have to keep asking myself in the face of difficulties.

Oh, how quickly things changed! Why didn't happiness last for ever? For ever wasn't a bit too long.

Why! Why! Why is the middle-class so stodgy - so utterly without a sense of humor?

I want by understanding myself to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.

Ah, what happiness it is to be with people who all are happy, to press hands, press cheeks, smile into eyes.

There are always these moments in life when the limits of suffering are reached and we become heroes and heroines.

Whenever I prepare for a journey I prepare as though for death. Should I never return, all is in order.

What do you want most to do? That's what I have to keep asking myself, in the face of difficulties.

As in the physical world, so in the spiritual world, pain does not last forever.

In fact, isn't it a joy - there is hardly a greater one - to find a new book, a living book, and to know that it will remain with you while life lasts?

There are in life as many aspects as attitudes towards it, and aspects change with attitudes.

Life never become a habit to me. It's always a marvel.

By health I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with... the earth and the wonders thereof - the sea - the sun.

I am going to enjoy life in Paris I know. It is so human and there is something noble in the city... It is a real city, old and fine and life plays in it for everybody to see.

That's all life is - something childish and very natural. Isn't it?

Now's the time when children's noses All become as red as roses And the colour of their faces Makes me think of orchard places Where the juicy apples grow, And tomatoes in a row.

Isn't life,' she stammered, 'isn't life--' But what life was she couldn't explain. No matter. He quite understood. 'Isn't it, darling?' said Laurie.

The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.

Life never becomes a habit to me. It's always a marvel.

Regret is an appalling waste of time.