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Top 25 Hortense Calisher Quotes (2025 Update)

Hortense Calisher Quote: “Sociology, the guilty science, functions best by alarm.”

1. “Sociology, the guilty science, functions best by alarm.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “Women can’t travel light. We’re in charge of the basic facts.”

2. “Women can’t travel light. We’re in charge of the basic facts.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “The novel is rescued life.”

3. “The novel is rescued life.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “A happy childhood can’t be cured. Mine’ll hang around my neck like a rainbow, that’s all, instead of a noose.”

4. “A happy childhood can’t be cured. Mine’ll hang around my neck like a rainbow, that’s all, instead of a noose.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “The words! I collected them in all shapes and sizes and hung them like bangles in my mind.”

5. “The words! I collected them in all shapes and sizes and hung them like bangles in my mind.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “Speech isn’t for agony.”

6. “Speech isn’t for agony.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “This is my answer to the gap between ideas and action – I will write it out.”

7. “This is my answer to the gap between ideas and action – I will write it out.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “What I have written-and how I came to write it-is most powerfully what I am.”

8. “What I have written-and how I came to write it-is most powerfully what I am.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “It has always seemed to me that if you could talk about your work in fully-formed phrases, you wouldn’t write it. The writing is the statement, you see, and it seems to me that the poem or the story or the novel you write is the kind of metaphor you cast on life.”

9. “It has always seemed to me that if you could talk about your work in fully-formed phrases, you wouldn’t write it. The writing is the statement, you see, and it seems to me that the poem or the story or the novel you write is the kind of metaphor you cast on life.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “Diplomacy is what is practiced after-the-fact. Never be too right too soon – as any smart Uncle will tell you. The man who guesses what will happen will be blamed for it. No one will believe he has merely guessed.”

10. “Diplomacy is what is practiced after-the-fact. Never be too right too soon – as any smart Uncle will tell you. The man who guesses what will happen will be blamed for it. No one will believe he has merely guessed.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “It took most people a lifetime to join the human race.”

11. “It took most people a lifetime to join the human race.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “How clerks love refusing. It salves them for being clerks.”

12. “How clerks love refusing. It salves them for being clerks.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “I get up and I have coffee and I speak to no man and I go to my desk.”

13. “I get up and I have coffee and I speak to no man and I go to my desk.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “Every art is a church without communicants, presided over by a parish of the respectable. An artist is born kneeling; he fights to stand. A critic, by nature of the judgment seat, is born sitting.”

14. “Every art is a church without communicants, presided over by a parish of the respectable. An artist is born kneeling; he fights to stand. A critic, by nature of the judgment seat, is born sitting.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “First publication is a pure, carnal leap into that dark which one dreams is life.”

15. “First publication is a pure, carnal leap into that dark which one dreams is life.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “Balance is compromise. Of the muscles.”

16. “Balance is compromise. Of the muscles.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “The young show the genetic process, the old merely die of it.”

17. “The young show the genetic process, the old merely die of it.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “But memory, after a time, dispenses its own emphasis, making a feuilleton of what we once thought most ponderable, laying its wreath on what we never thought to recall.”

18. “But memory, after a time, dispenses its own emphasis, making a feuilleton of what we once thought most ponderable, laying its wreath on what we never thought to recall.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “I don’t suppose there’s really any critic except posterity.”

19. “I don’t suppose there’s really any critic except posterity.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “When anything gets freed, a zest goes round the world.”

20. “When anything gets freed, a zest goes round the world.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “Decades go faster toward the end of a century.”

21. “Decades go faster toward the end of a century.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “I always say that one’s poetry is a solace to oneself and a nuisance to one’s friends.”

22. “I always say that one’s poetry is a solace to oneself and a nuisance to one’s friends.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “The standard dreaming of a society has to be listened to.”

23. “The standard dreaming of a society has to be listened to.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “But the trek that starts with the feet always rises in time to the head. There had never been any of mankind’s that didn’t.”

24. “But the trek that starts with the feet always rises in time to the head. There had never been any of mankind’s that didn’t.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “In a family, the same spoken lines come in over and over. Intimacy exhausts.”

25. “In a family, the same spoken lines come in over and over. Intimacy exhausts.”

— Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher Quote: “Agony without genius was gaucherie.”

26. “Agony without genius was gaucherie.”

— Hortense Calisher

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