Gertrude Stein quotes:

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.

A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables.

America is my country and Paris is my hometown.

What is marriage, is marriage protection or religion, is marriage renunciation or abundance, is marriage a stepping-stone or an end. What is marriage.

What is music. A passion for colonies not a love of country.

I rarely believe anything, because at the time of believing I am not really there to believe.

It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realise the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger.

Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.

But the problem is that when I go around and speak on campuses, I still don't get young men standing up and saying, 'How can I combine career and family?'

Action and reaction are equal and opposite.

The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it.

I do want to get rich but I never want to do what there is to do to get rich.

A house in the country is not the same as a country house.

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.

In a war everybody always knows all about Switzerland, in peace times it is just Switzerland but in war time it is the only country that everybody has confidence in, everybody.

It is funny the two things most men are proudest of is the thing that any man can do and doing does in the same way, that is being drunk and being the father of their son.

Money is always there but the pockets change; it is not in the same pockets after a change, and that is all there is to say about money.

History takes time. History makes memory.

It is natural not to care about a sister certainly not when she is four years older and grinds her teeth at night.

Just before she died she asked, What is the answer? No answer came. She laughed and said, In that case, what is the question? Then she died.

There is a difference between twenty-nine and thirty. When you are twenty-nine it can be the beginning of everything. When you are thirty it can be the end of everything.

There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer.

I have declared that patience is never more than patient. I too have declared, that I who am not patient am patient.

This is the lesson that history teaches: repetition.

Men cannot count, they do not know that two and two make four if women do not tell them so.

Do not forget birthdays. This is in no way a propaganda for a larger population.

The thing that differentiates man from animals is money.

I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned to it.

Everyone gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.

I think the reason I am important is that I know everything.

It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business.

Once more I can climb about and remind you that a woman in this epoch does the important literary thinking.

That is what war is and dancing it is forward and back, when one is out walking one wants not to go back the way they came but in dancing and in war it is forward and back.

If you can do it then why do it?

The difference between saints, forget-me-nots, and mountains, have to, have to, have to at a time.

Do you know because I tell you so, or do you know, do you know.

It is an extraordinary thing but it is true, wars are only a means of publicising the things already accomplished.

It is nice that nobody writes as they talk and that the printed language is different from the spoken otherwise you could not lose yourself in books and of course you do you completely do."

I simply contend that the middle-class ideal which demands that people be affectionate, respectable, honest and content, that they avoid excitements and cultivate serenity is the ideal that appeals to me, it is in short the ideal of affectionate family life, of honorable business methods.

It is natural to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes to that siren until she allures us to our death.

What is the answer? In that case, what is the question?

The nineteenth century was completely lacking in logic, it had cosmic terms and hopes, and aspirations, and discoveries, and ideals but it had no logic.

The deepest thing in any one is the conviction of the bad luck that follows boasting.

Supposing everyone lived at one time what would they say. They would observe that stringing string beans is universal.

There is no beginning to an end / But there is a beginning and an end / To beginning.

I was somewhat drunk with what I had done. And I am always one to prefer being sober.

I certainly do care for you Jeff Campbell less than you are always thinking and much more than you are ever knowing

The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not.

You'll be old and you never lived, and you kind of feel silly to lie down and die and to never have lived, to have been a job chaser and never have lived.

I don't envisage collectivism. There is no such animal, it is always individualism, sometimes the rest vote and sometimes they do not, and if they do they do and if they do not they do not.

Considering how dangerous everything is, nothing is really very frightening.

Counting is the religion of this generation it is its hope and its salvation.

Everybody thinks that this civilization has lasted a very long time but it really does take very few grandfathers' granddaughters to take us back to the dark ages.

A diary means yes indeed.

This is the real thing of disillusion that no one, not any one really is believing, seeing, understanding, thinking anything as you are thinking, believing, seeing, understanding such a thing.

Disillusionment in living is finding that no one can really ever be agreeing with you completely in anything.

The earth is the earth as a peasant sees it, the world is the world as a duchess sees it, and anyway a duchess would be nothing if the earth was not there as the peasant sees it.

It is extraordinary that when you are acquainted with a whole family you can forget about them.

There is too much fathering going on just now and there is no doubt about it fathers are depressing.

A conversation in English in Finnish and in French can not be held at the same time nor with indifference ever or after a time.

... there was the first Balkan war and the second Balkan war and then there was the first world war. It is extraordinary how having done a thing once you have to do it again, there is the pleasure of coincidence and there is the pleasure of repetition, and so there is the second world war, and in between there was the Abyssinian war and the Spanish civil war.

Americans are very friendly and very suspicious, that is what Americans are and that is what always upsets the foreigner, who deals with them, they are so friendly how can they be so suspicious they are so suspicious how can they be so friendly but they just are.

In France one must adapt oneself to the fragrance of a urinal.

It is not what France gave you but what it did not take from you that was important.

I'll always be Alice Toklas if you'll be Gertrude Stein.

I murmured to Picasso that I liked his portrait of Gertrude Stein. Yes, he said, everybody said that she does not look like it, but that does not make any difference, she will, he said.

French people do like good fighting, they like it better than anything.

I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed.

Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. 'Stop!' cried the groaning old man at last, 'Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree.

We are always the same age inside.

Even the propagandists on the radio find it very difficult to really say let alone believe that the world will be a happy place, of love and peace and plenty, and that the lion will lie down with the lamb and everybody will believe anybody.

One of the things that I discovered in lecturing was that gradually one ceased to hear what one said one heard what the audience hears one say.

August is a month when if it is hot weather it is really very hot.

Nature is commonplace. Imitation is more interesting.

You cannot go into the womb to form the child; it is there and makes itself and comes forth whole-and there it is and you have made it and have felt it, but it has come itself.

Since the war nothing is so really frightening not the dark not alone in a room or anything on a road or a dog or a moon but two things, yes, indigestion and high places they are frightening.

More and more I like to take a train. I understand why the French prefer it to automobiling it is so much more sociable, and of course these days so much more of an adventure, and the irregularity of its regularity is fascinating.

I am I because my little dog knows me.

Let me listen to me and not to them.

Everywhere there was somewhere and everywhere there they were men women children dogs cows wild pigs little rabbits cats lizards and animals. That is the way it was. And everybody dogs cats sheep rabbits and lizards and children all wanted to tell ... all about themselves.

it is nice that nobody writes as they talk and that the printed language is different from the spoken otherwise you could not lose yourself in books and of course you do you completely do.

You are all a lost generation.

That is what you are. That's what you all are...All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation.

A masterpiece... may be unwelcome but it is never dull.

Oh, I wish I were a miser; being a miser must be so occupying.

Whoever said money can't buy happiness didn't know where to shop

You are so afraid of losing your moral sense that you are not willing to take it through anything more dangerous than a mud-puddle.

What was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there.

Men and girls, men and girls: Artificial swine and pearls.

Money is always there but the pockets change.

A very important thing is not to make up your mind that you are any one thing.

When moneys in a purse in my own pocket / It means wealth ...

Forensics is eloquence and reduction.

Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen.

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables

America is my country and Paris is my hometown

An audience is always warming but it must never be necessary to your work

For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts.

I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences.

Sculpture is made with two instruments and some supports and pretty air.

It is the human habit to think in centuries from a grandparent to a grandchild because it just does take about a hundred years for things to cease to have the same meaning as they did before,

Spaniards and Americans are not like Europeans, they are not like Orientals, they have something in common, that is they do not need religion or mysticism not to believe in reality as all the world knows it, not even when they see it.

A creator is not in advance of his generation but he is the first of his contemporaries to be conscious of what is happening to his generation.

It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much, doing nothing, really doing nothing.

Nature and man are opposed in Spain.

In the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is the first of the last generation.

And identity is funny being yourself is funny as you are never yourself to yourself except as you remember yourself and then of course you do not believe yourself.

Literature - creative literature - unconcerned with sex, is inconceivable.

Remarks are not literature.

It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself.

there is no pleasure so sweet as the pleasure of spending money but the pleasure of writing is longer. There is no denying that.

I could undertake to be an efficient pupil if it were possible to find an efficient teacher.

Coffee is real good when you drink it gives you time to think. It's a lot more than just a drink; it's something happening. Not as in hip, but like an event, a place to be, but not like a location, but like somewhere within yourself. It gives you time, but not actual hours or minutes, but a chance to be, like be yourself, and have a second cup.

A little artist has all the tragic unhappiness and the sorrows of a great artist and he is not a great artist.

One of the pleasant things those of us who write or paint do is to have the daily miracle. It does come.

The unreal is natural, so natural that it makes of unreality the most natural of anything natural. That is what America does, and that is what America is.

When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone. After all, human beings are like that.

A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.