Caitlin Thomas Quotes

Quotes about:

• If happiness comes at all: which is by no means prearranged; it comes by the way, while you are seeking for something else. Something outside yourself, beyond yourself: in a brief absorption of self-forgetfulness.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Happiness, Mean, Self

  17 Copy quote

• Sex divorced from love is the thief of personal dignity.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Sex, Love Is, Thieves

  15 Copy quote

• My bitterness is not an abstract substance, it is as solid as a Christmas cake; I can cut it in slices and hand it round and there is still plenty left, for tomorrow.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Cutting, Hands, Cake

  9 Copy quote

• There is a brotherliness about a drinking person, which is coldly lacking in the straight and narrow enemies of drink; the difference between the two is more marked than nationality or belief: it is an opposite species altogether. It is against the unwritten laws of congeniality for them to mix. For me, a man who does not drink is distinctly indecent.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Drinking, Men, Law

  6 Copy quote

• One should never go back to a place one has loved; for, however, rough the going forward is, it is better than the snuffing out-of-love return.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Return, Should, Rough

  10 Copy quote

• there is this malign curse laid on dipsomaniacs. That they must absolutely have a drink: in order to feel strong enough to stop drinking.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Strong, Drinking, Order

  9 Copy quote

• A lot of warm vulgarity is incomparably preferable to a little bit of pinched niceness

  Caitlin Thomas

  Vulgarity Is, Heartless, Littles

  7 Copy quote

• there is no gaiety as gay as the gaiety of grief.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Grief, Gay, Gaiety

  8 Copy quote

• So it is useless to evade reality, because it only makes it more virulent in the end. But instead, look steadfastly into the slit, pin-pointed, malignant eyes of reality: as an old-hand trainer dominates his wild beasts. Take it by the scruff of the neck, and shake the evil intent out of it; till it rattles out harmlessly, like gall bladder stones, fossilized on the floor.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Eye, Reality, Hands

  10 Copy quote

• England, where nobody ever says what they mean: and by denying feeling, kill it off stone-cold at the roots.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Mean, Roots, Feelings

  9 Copy quote

• resignation, perhaps the most stifling word in the language.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Language, Stifling, Resignation

  8 Copy quote

• When the desire is on for one particular person, nobody else will do.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Desire, Persons, Particular

  11 Copy quote

• Between threading a needle and raving insanity is the smallest eye in creation.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Eye, Insanity, Creation

  4 Copy quote

• Virtue in a man doesn't make you want to grab him.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Men, Want, Virtue

  Caitlin Thomas, George Tremlett (1986). “Caitlin: a warring absence”, Harvill Secker

  7 Copy quote

• But the true evil of drink lies in the disillusion: that the initial pleasure very soon evaporates, leaving a demoralizing craving for more, which is not even temporarily pleasurable. Which then leads to deterioration of the faculties of both body and mind; plus a bewildering lack of co-operation between the two.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Lying, True Evil, Two

  13 Copy quote

• The wretched Artist himself is alternatively the lowest worm that ever crawled when no fire is in him; or the loftiest God that ever sand when the fire is going.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Art, Fire, Sand

  11 Copy quote

• none of what I know is out of books. ... I prefer tactual learning. Touching, on the quick of the sore nail, of present, mobile life. To toy, to gnaw, to tear: at the living element of pain. Like at a living drumstick.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Pain, Book, Learning

  12 Copy quote

• I am unable, mentally incapable, of relating the dead thing, the broken body refusing to divulge why or where the occupant has gone, to the thing that was alive.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Grief, Broken, Gone

  8 Copy quote

• Jealousy is the lifelong noose hanging about the neck of love.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Jealousy, Necks, Lifelong

  9 Copy quote

• There is nothing harder for an Artist than to retain his Artistic integrity in the tomb of success. A tomb, nevertheless, which nearly every Artist: whether he admits it or not; naturally wants to get into.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Success, Integrity, Artist

  7 Copy quote

• Fearful as reality is, it is less fearful than evasions of reality. Look steadfastly into the slit, pinpointed malignant eyes of reality as an old-hand trainer dominates his wild beasts.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Eye, Reality, Hands

  4 Copy quote

• I had got to the dawn of the beautiful not caring, but fully aware, stage, which degenerates so imperceptibly into the doing something unpermissible stage.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Beautiful, Caring, Dawn

  8 Copy quote

• [On journalists:] They are as disruptive a menace to the public body: as grating turds in the intestines are to the private body.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Body, Journalism, Turds

  4 Copy quote

• [On journalists:] They are the scavengers of society who, possessing no guts of their own, tear out the guts of celebrities. They have the sycophantic, false enthusing gush of maiden aunts: who are accustomed to being trampled on doormats.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Aunt, Tears, Journalism

  4 Copy quote

• But there is that about well-intentioned advice that has the opposite effect of the one intended, and causes a Spanish fly of perversity to enter into the hitherto passive soul.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Opposites, Advice, Soul

  4 Copy quote

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