Quotes About Influence

I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else. Do not dream of influencing other people, I would say, if I knew how to make it sound exalted. Think of things in themselves.

There is the strange power we have of changing facts by the force of the imagination.

She came into a room; she stood, as he had often seen her, in a doorway with lots of people round her. But it was Clarissa one remembered. Not that she was striking; not beautiful at all; there was nothing picturesque about her; she never said anything specially clever; there she was however; there she was.

To evade such temptations is the first duty of the poet. For as the ear is the antechamber to the soul, poetry can adulterate and destroy more surely then lust or gunpowder. The poet's, then, is the highest office of all. His words reach where others fall short. A silly song of Shakespeare's has done more for the poor and the wicked than all the preachers and philanthropists in the world.

I do think all good and evil comes from words. I have to tune myself into a good temper with something musical, and I run to a book as a child to its mother.

For one's children so often gave one's own perceptions a little thrust forwards.

She had influenced him more than any person he had ever known. And always in this way coming before him without his wishing it, cool, ladylike, critical; or ravishing, romantic.

Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do. They are driven by instincts which are not within their control.

Women made civilisation impossible with all their "charm " all their silliness.

To be myself (I note) I need the illumination of other people's eyes, and therefore cannot be entirely sure what is my self.

Las mujeres han servido durante siglos como espejos dotados del mágico y delicioso poder de reflejar la figura del hombre duplicando su tamaño natural.

Distance had an extraordinary power.

No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes... ....Tories, Liberal Party and Labour Party for what do they battle except their own prestige - No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes....Tories, Liberal Party and Labour Party for what do they battle except their own prestige

Better was it to go unknown and leave behind you an arch, a potting shed, a wall where peaches ripen, than to burn like a meteor and leave no dust.

We have destroyed something by our presence, a world perhaps.

She had made him think he could do anything. Nobody else took him seriously. But she made him believe that he could do whatever he wanted.

You send a girl to school in order to make friends - the right sort.

Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.

When you asked me to speak about women and fiction I sat down on the banks of a river and began to wonder what the words meant. They might mean simply a few remarks about Fanny Burney; a few more about Jane Austen; a tribute to the Brontes and a sketch of Haworth Parsonage under snow, some witticisms if possible about Miss Mitford; a respectful allusion to George Eliot; a reference to Mrs Gaskell and one would have done.

The writer has us by the hand, forces us along her road, makes us see what she sees, never leaves us for a moment or allows us to forget her. At the end we are steeped through and through with the genius, the vehemence, the indignation of Charlotte Bronte. Remarkable faces, figures of strong outline and gnarled feature have flashed upon us in passing; but it is through her eyes that we have seen them.

Judith Shakespeare] lives in you and in me [...] she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh.

Are they not criminals, books that have wasted our time and sympathy; are they not the most insidious enemies of society, corrupters, defilers, the writers of false books, faked books, books that fill the air with decay and disease?

Let him be fifty feet away, let him not even speak to you, let him not even see you, he permeated, he prevailed, he imposed himself. He changed everything.

We have our responsibilities as readers and even our importance. The standards we raise and the judgments we pass steal in the air and become part of the atmosphere which writers breathe as they work. An influence is created which tells upon them even if it never finds its way into print.