Best 116 quotes of Katherine Mansfield on MyQuotes

Ach, Tchekov! Why are you dead? Why can’t I talk to you in a big darkish room at late evening—where the light is green from the waving trees outside? I’d like to write a series of Heavens: that would be one.

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

All the wild sweetness of the flower Tangled against the wall. It was that magic, silent hour.... The branches grew so tall They twined themselves into a bower. The sun shown ... and the fall Of yellow blossom on the grass! You feel that golden rain? Both of you could not hold, alas, (both of you tried, in vain) A memory, stranger. So I pass.... It will not come again.

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

Bless you, my darling, and remember you are always in the heart - oh tucked so close there is no chance of escape - of your sister.

But one day we shall be rich, and the next poor. One day we shall dine in a palace and the next we'll sit in a forest and toast mushrooms on a hatpin.

Children are unaccountable little creatures.

conversation is like a dear little baby that is brought in to be handed round. You must rock it, nurse it, keep it on the move if you want it to keep smiling.

Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different.

Courage is like a disobedient dog, once it starts running away it flies all the faster for your attempts to recall it.

Do the hardest thing on earth for you. ACT YOURSELF.

Do you remember your childhood? I am always coming across these marvelous accounts by writers who declare that they remember 'everything.' I certainly don't. The dark stretches, the blanks, are much bigger than the bright glimpses. I seem to have spent most of my time like a plant in a cupboard.

England is merely an island of beef swimming in a warm gulf stream of gravy.

Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change.

How hard it is to escape from places. However carefully one goes they hold you — you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences — like rags and shreds of your very life.

How idiotic civilization is! Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle?

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.

I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.

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

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.

I am poor - obscure - just eighteen years of age - with a rapacious appetite for everything and principles as light as my purse.

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.

I feel I must live alone, alone, alone - with artists only to touch the door. Every artist cuts off his ear and nails it on the outside of the door for the others to shout into.

If only one could tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools. With mushrooms it is so simple - you salt them well, put them aside and have patience. But with love, you have no sooner lighted on anything that bears even the remotest resemblance to it than you are perfectly certain it is not only a genuine specimen, but perhaps the only genuine mushroom ungathered.

If you wish to live, you must first attend your own funeral.

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

I love the evening star. Does that sound foolish? I used to go into the backyard, after sunset, and wait for it until it shone above the dark gum tree. I used to whisper 'There you are, my darling.' And just in that first moment it seemed to be shining for me alone. It seemed to understand this ... something which is like longing, and yet it is not longing. Or regret - it is more like regret.

I love the night. I love to feel the tide of darkness rising, slowly and slowly washing, turning over and over, lifting, floating, all that lies strewn upon the dark beach, all that lies hid in rocky hollows.

I love the rain. I want the feeling of it on my face.

I love this place; I love mountains and big skies and forests. And the weather is still supremely beautiful even though the lower peaks are powdered with fresh snow. But Heavens! What sun. It never has an ending. I am basking at this minute - half past four - too hot without a hat, & the sky is that transparent blue only to be seen in autumn - the forest trees steeped in light.

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?

In the shortest sea voyage there is no sense of time. You have been down in the cabin for hours or days or years. Nobody knows or cares. You know all the people to the point of indifference. You do not believe in dry land any more - you are caught in the pendulum itself, and left there, idly swinging.

In the woods where snow is thick, bars of sunlight lay like pale fire.

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.

I saw myself driving through Eternity in a timeless taxi.

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 think of you often. Especially in the evenings, when I am on the balcony and it’s too dark to write or to do anything but wait for the stars. A time I love. One feels half disembodied, sitting like a shadow at the door of one’s being while the dark tide rises. Then comes the moon, marvellously serene, and small stars, very merry for some reason of their own. It is so easy to forget, in a worldly life, to attend to these miracles.

It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.

It is strange that there are times when I feel the stars are not at all solemn: they are secretly gay.

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.

It's rather nice to think of oneself as a sailor bending over the map of one's mind and deciding where to go and how to go. The great thing to remember is we can do whatever we wish to do provided our wish is strong enough.

I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.... This all sounds very strenuous and serious. But now that I have wrestled with it, it's no longer so. I feel happy- deep down. All is well.

I want, by understanding myself, to understand others.

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.

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

Letters are the real curse of my existence. I hate to write them: I have to. If I don't, there they are - the great guilty gates barring my way.

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

Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.

Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back.

My love for you tonight is so deep and tender that it seems to be outside myself as well.