Top 60 Gertrude Stein Quotes

Action and reaction are equal and opposite.

We are always the same age inside.

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

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

Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone.

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

I know what Germans are. They are a funny people. They are always choosing someone to lead them in a direction which they do not want to go.

There is no there there.

A diary means yes indeed.

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.

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

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

Before the flowers of friendship faded friendship faded.

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

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

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.

It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for the future, none at all. It certainly is extraordinary, but it is certainly true.

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

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.

Hemingway’s remarks are not literature.

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

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

War is never fatal but always lost. Always lost.

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

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

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.

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

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

Romance is everything.

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?’

Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen.

It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for the future, none at all. It certainly is extraordinary, but it is certainly true.

A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself.

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.

This is the lesson that history teaches: repetition.

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

Generally speaking, everyone is more interesting doing nothing than doing anything.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

The thing that differentiates man from animals is money.

Name any name and then remember everybody you ever knew who bore that name. Are they all alike. I think so.

Whoever said money can’t buy happiness simply didn’t know where to go shopping.

To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write.

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

Just as everybody has the vote including women, I think children should, because as a child is conscious of itself then it has to me an existence and has a stake in what happens.

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

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

Name any name and then remember everybody you ever knew who bore that name. Are they all alike. I think so.

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

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

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.

Let me listen to me and not to them.

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

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.