Top 120 Glenn Haybittle Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “The known part of ourselves is a pathetic little creature compared with all that’s unknown within us.”

— Glenn Haybittle

102. “If you’re not going to feel how are you going to know what to think? Isn’t it in the nature of feeling to evolve thought?”

— Glenn Haybittle

103. “Memory is both the best and cruellest friend we will ever have.”

— Glenn Haybittle

104. “There are no full stops in the human mind. There is no final draft. Everything that happens continues happening. It has an existence outside of time.”

— Glenn Haybittle

105. “It’s only when I’m sad that I feel truly wise.”

— Glenn Haybittle

106. “But sometimes someone will wear something that allows you a glimpse of their secret self. The essence becomes distinct for a moment.”

— Glenn Haybittle

107. “I learned in those days that it’s the mind’s apprehension of beauty which renews everything, which enables us to see the world for the first time again. Beauty is a private moment in the mind, which we then seek to communicate.”

— Glenn Haybittle

108. “So much of our life is the circling of a dream. The dream, a changeable elusive presence, is at the heart of our identity, it is the fabric to which all our qualities are stitched. Did it matter that the dream never found fruition in the physical world? The important thing was never to relinquish it. It’s the dream which keeps beauty as an animating source of strength in our lives, which reminds us we are connected to a larger reality.”

— Glenn Haybittle

109. “Everyone tells lies to get what they want. First of all we tell lies to ourselves and then we tell them to everyone else. That’s what the past becomes – a kind of flower bed in which you’re uprooting and replanting all the time.”

— Glenn Haybittle

110. “My mother later blamed the Cold War and the threat of nuclear extinction for all her shortcomings as a mother. She said the state of fear she lived in during that period froze over all other feelings. That was the explanation for her aversion to touching me or even being emotionally present when I needed reassurance. I didn’t accept it as a valid excuse at the time, but now I’m older I understand better the crippling consequences of mental health issues.”

— Glenn Haybittle

111. “Boyhood still often seems the time he was most real to himself and most wise, as if every habit acquired since is merely fancy dress.”

— Glenn Haybittle

112. “If you’re learning any craft my advice would always be to emulate and aspire to a master. Sure, you’re placing an obstacle field in your path, but what is happiness after all if not the overcoming of obstacles?”

— Glenn Haybittle

113. “What though is happiness if not the overcoming of obstacles?”

— Glenn Haybittle

114. “Most of us carry around the extravagant hope that the world can at least catch a glimpse of what we consider to be our true face. We can’t help harbouring the desire that past achievements and former incarnations still reveal some glimpse of themselves on our person. That people might be able to read the history of a face and not just its live bulletins.”

— Glenn Haybittle

115. “It’s like men and women sing different words to the same song.”

— Glenn Haybittle

116. “The further you venture from familiarity the more interesting your thoughts become.”

— Glenn Haybittle

117. “Sadness, essentially, is the ghost of happiness.”

— Glenn Haybittle

118. “Music can be the medium of sharing experience in a purified and heightened form; but it can also make being alone a stirring and highly privileged place to be.”

— Glenn Haybittle

119. “But my truth is that, essentially, we’re like flowers – we have an evolutionary imperative, an informed sense of what we have it in ourselves to become, which originates in the dark and slowly creates the conditions that enable us to fulfil our nature.”

— Glenn Haybittle

120. “Personal relationships are paramount in life. At their best they can confirm the highest ideals we have about human life. Relationships are how we learn about ourselves. How we evolve, both as individuals and communities. How we learn about the world around us. Relationships are the most accessible source of inspiration. They can bring us to our knees; they can move us close to heaven. Personal relationships are our sacred text, our scripture.”

— Glenn Haybittle

121. “Somewhere at the back of your mind is a blueprint of the real life you feel you ought to be living. Now and again a moment from this life breaks through into the everyday.”

— Glenn Haybittle

122. “A mask can be expedient when it’s a mask you know you’re wearing and can take off at will, but masks which are worn habitually cannot be removed without tearing off some of your real face.”

— Glenn Haybittle

123. “No one is honest with themselves when they want something.”

— Glenn Haybittle

124. “The measure of intimacy achieved ought to be the touchstone of all experience.”

— Glenn Haybittle

125. “You’d like to think the death of a person is like the death of a star, that it will enrich the cosmos with precious elements, with added meaning.”

— Glenn Haybittle

126. “Males aren’t trained to proof-read their naked bodies the way females are.”

— Glenn Haybittle

127. “What is fate if not attraction?”

— Glenn Haybittle

128. “Sentimentality, especially in the guise of idealism, not only breeds cynicism but also makes it the necessary foil sometimes.”

— Glenn Haybittle

129. “I wanted to apologise, not only for not recognising her which had granted me an unwarranted advantage at her expense, but also for how much I had aged since our last meeting. As if this was a flaw in my character. As if I had now ruined her memories of me. No wonder we love art so much – the beauty that forever remains unaltered.”

— Glenn Haybittle

130. “Nothing generates more intensity than thwarted desire.”

— Glenn Haybittle

131. “Beauty is a private moment in the mind, which we then seek to communicate.”

— Glenn Haybittle

132. “Music makes you feel younger, more confident you can take on the world and the obstacles it throws at you.”

— Glenn Haybittle

133. “Bereavement is sometimes like wading across a succession of snowfields with no landmark in sight. You are a lone small figure in a vast barren landscape. Other times it’s like a Ferris wheel ride. Like being strapped into a swinging spinning bucket. The dizzying dislocation from familiar grounded reality.”

— Glenn Haybittle

134. “Sharp lines draw too much attention to themselves, like vanity. And what’s vanity but a series of sharp lines which have yet to be softened?”

— Glenn Haybittle

135. “Life cannot be experienced deeply without kindness, just as life cannot be experienced deeply without art.”

— Glenn Haybittle

136. “Self-pity produces only black and white film. It removes all colour from the imagination.”

— Glenn Haybittle