Thomas Wolfe Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• My dear, dear girl [. . .] we can't turn back the days that have gone. We can't turn life back to the hours when our lungs were sound, our blood hot, our bodies young. We are a flash of fire--a brain, a heart, a spirit. And we are three-cents-worth of lime and iron--which we cannot get back.

  Thomas Wolfe

  Girl, Heart, Iron

  35 Copy quote

• [T]he essence of belief is doubt, the essence of reality is questioning. The essence of Time is Flow, not Fix. The essence of faith is the knowledge that all flows and that everything must change. The growing man is Man Alive, and his "philosophy" must grow, must flow, with him. . . . the man too fixed today, unfixed tomorrow - and his body of beliefs is nothing but a series of fixations.

  Thomas Wolfe

  Philosophy, Reality, Men

  28 Copy quote

• The modern picture of the artist began to form: The poor, but free spirit, plebeian but aspiring only to be classless, to cut himself forever free from the bonds of the greedy bourgeoisie, to be whatever the fat burghers feared most, to cross the line wherever they drew it, to look at the world in a way they couldn't see, to be high, live low, stay young forever -- in short, to be the bohemian.

  Thomas Wolfe

  Cutting, Artist, Forever

  26 Copy quote

• Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs.

  Thomas Wolfe

  Art, Art And Culture, Culture

  15 Copy quote

• The human mind is a fearful instrument of adaptation, and in nothing is this more clearly shown than in its mysterious powers of resilience, self-protection, and self-healing. Unless an event completely shatters the order of one's life, the mind, if it has youth and health and time enough, accepts the inevitable and gets itself ready for the next happening like a grimly dutiful American tourist who, on arriving at a new town, looks around him, takes his bearings, and says, "Well, where do I go from here?

  Thomas Wolfe

  Healing, Order, Self

  Thomas Wolfe (2016). “You Can't Go Home Again”, p.48, Thomas Wolfe

  13 Copy quote

• Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment is a window on all time.

  Thomas Wolfe

  Time, Home, Winning

  Thomas Wolfe (2006). “Look Homeward, Angel”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

  11 Copy quote

• Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into the nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas.

  Thomas Wolfe

  Time, Night, Texas

  Thomas Wolfe (2016). “Look Homeward, Angel”, p.4, Thomas Wolfe

  36 Copy quote

• You can't go home again

  Thomas Wolfe

  Inspirational, Home, Loss

  Title of novel (1940)

  17 Copy quote

• Peace fell upon her spirit. Strong comfort and assurance bathed her whole being. Life was so solid and splendid, and so good.

  Thomas Wolfe

  Strong, Comfort, Spirit

  Thomas Wolfe (2011). “You Can't Go Home Again”, p.271, Simon and Schuster

  11 Copy quote

• I believe that we are lost here in America, but I believe we shall be found. And this belief, which mounts now to the catharsis of knowledge and conviction, is for me--and I think for all of us--not only our own hope, but America's everlasting, living dream.

  Thomas Wolfe

  Dream, Believe, Thinking

  Thomas Wolfe (2011). “You Can't Go Home Again”, p.637, Simon and Schuster

  8 Copy quote

• And who shall say--whatever disenchantment follows--that we ever forget magic; or that we can ever betray, on this leaden earth, the apple-tree, the singing, and the gold?

  Thomas Wolfe

  Apples, Tree, Magic

  Thomas Wolfe (2006). “Look Homeward, Angel”, p.372, Simon and Schuster

  9 Copy quote

• O lost, And by the wind grieved, Ghost, Come back again.

  Thomas Wolfe

  Wind, Ghost, Lost

  Thomas Wolfe (2006). “Look Homeward, Angel”, p.372, Simon and Schuster

  11 Copy quote

• I don't know yet what I am capable of doing, but, by God, I have genius -- I know it too well to blush behind it.

  Thomas Wolfe

  Genius, Wells, Behinds

  Thomas Wolfe, Julia Elizabeth Wolfe (1968). “The letters of Thomas Wolfe to his mother”

  8 Copy quote

• What I had to face, the very bitter lesson that everyone who wants to write has got to learn, was that a thing may in itself be the finest piece of writing one has ever done, and yet have absolutely no place in the manuscript one hopes to publish.

  Thomas Wolfe

  Writing, Done, Pieces

  Thomas Wolfe (1952). “Selections from the works of Thomas Wolfe”

  8 Copy quote

• ...he was like a man who stands upon a hill above the town he had left, yet does not say 'The town is near,' but turns his eyes upon the distant soaring ranges.

  Thomas Wolfe

  Eye, Men, Doe

  Thomas Wolfe (1997). “Look Homeward, Angel”, p.508, Simon and Schuster

  9 Copy quote

• In Sleep we lie all naked and alone, in Sleep we are united at the heart of night and darkness, and we are strange and beautiful asleep; for we are dying the darkness and we know no death.

  Thomas Wolfe

  Beautiful, Lying, Heart

  Thomas Wolfe, Francis E. Skipp (1989). “The Complete Short Stories Of Thomas Wolfe”, p.65, Simon and Schuster

  19 Copy quote

• Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America -- that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement. At any rate, that is how it seemed to young George Webber, who was never so assured of his purpose as when he was going somewhere on a train. And he never had the sense of home so much as when he felt that he was going there. It was only when he got there that his homelessness began.

  Thomas Wolfe

  Home, America, Purpose

  Thomas Wolfe (2016). “You Can't Go Home Again”, p.57, Thomas Wolfe

  13 Copy quote

• Only the dead know Brooklyn.

  Thomas Wolfe

  Brooklyn, Knows

  Thomas Wolfe, Francis E. Skipp (1989). “The Complete Short Stories Of Thomas Wolfe”, p.260, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

• Not even the most powerful organs of the press, including Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times, can discover a new artist or certify his work and make it stick. They can only bring you the scores.

  Thomas Wolfe

  Time, Art, New York

  8 Copy quote

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