Quotes from Katherine Mansfield

I adore Life. What do all the fools matter and all the stupidity. They do matter but somehow for me they cannot touch the body of Life. Life is marvellous. I want to be deeply rooted in it - to live - to expand - to breathe in it - to rejoice - to share it. To give and to be asked for Love.

Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different. Life would undergo a change of appearance because we ourselves had undergone a change of attitude.

The mind I love most must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with flowers planted by the mind.

You have never been curious about me; you never wanted to explore my soul.

I am treating you as my friend, asking you to share my present minuses in the hope that I can ask you to share my future plusses.

This is not a letter but my arms about you for a brief moment.

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.

I have made it a rule of my life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy... you can't build on it; it's only good for wallowing in.

When we begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them.

Would you not like to try all sorts of lives - one is so very small - but that is the satisfaction of writing - one can impersonate so many people.

What is it with me? Am I absolutely nobody, but merely inordinately vain? I do not know…. But I am most fearfully unhappy. That is all. I am so unhappy that I wish I was dead—yet I should be mad to die when I have not yet lived at all.

I have such a horror of telegrams that ask me how I am!! I always want to reply dead.

I am a recluse at present & do nothing but write & read & read & write

What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly, by a feeling of bliss - absolute bliss - as though you'd suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle into every finger and toe?...

It's a terrible thing to be alone -- yes it is -- it is -- but don't lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath -- as terrible as you like -- but a mask.

To be alive and to be a 'writer' is enough.

I want so to live that I work with my hands and my feeling and my brain. I want a garden, a small house, grass, animals, books, pictures, music. And out of this, the expression of this, I want to be writing (Though I may write about cabmen. That's no matter.) But warm, eager, living life — to be rooted in life — to learn, to desire, to feel, to think, to act. This is what I want. And nothing less. That is what I must try for.

We can do whatever we wish to do provided our wish is strong enough. But the tremendous effort needed- one doesn't always want to make it-does one? ... But what else can be done? What's the alternative? What do you want most to do? That's what I have to keep asking myself, in the face of difficulties.

When we begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.

When we can begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.

I am treating you as my friend, asking you to share my present minuses in the hope I can ask you to share my future pluses.

I really only have Perfect Fun with myself. Other people won't stop and look at the things I want to look at or, if they do, they stop to please me or to humor me or to keep the peace.

Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different. Life would undergo a change of appearance because we ourselves had undergone a change in attitude.

Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it is good only for wallowing.