Top 120 Katherine Mansfield Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 2 of 3

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

— Katherine Mansfield

52. “The ostrich burying its head in the sand does at any rate wish to convey the impression that its head is the most important part of it.”

— Katherine Mansfield

53. “The truth is friendship is every bit as sacred and eternal as marriage.”

— Katherine Mansfield

54. “Regret is an appalling waste of energy, and no one who intends to be a writer can afford to indulge in it.”

— Katherine Mansfield

55. “Laura’s upbringing made her wonder for a moment whether it was quite respectful of a workman to talk to her of bangs slap in the eye. But she did quite follow him.”

— Katherine Mansfield

56. “What did garden-parties and baskets and lace frocks matter to him? He was far from all those things. He was wonderful, beautiful.”

— Katherine Mansfield

57. “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...”

— Katherine Mansfield

58. “Wind moving through grass so that the grass quivers. This moves me with an emotion I don’t even understand.”

— Katherine Mansfield

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

— Katherine Mansfield

60. “If only one could tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools.”

— Katherine Mansfield

61. “As for the roses, you could not help feeling they understood that roses are the only flowers that impress people at garden-parties; the only flowers that everybody is certain of knowing.”

— Katherine Mansfield

62. “There are always these moments in life when the limits of suffering are reached and we become heroes and heroines.”

— Katherine Mansfield

63. “Everything about her was sweet, pale like honey. You would not have been surprised to see a bee caught in the tangles of that yellow hair.”

— Katherine Mansfield

64. “Now’s the time when children’s noses All become as red as roses And the colour of their faces Makes me think of orchard places Where the juicy apples grow, And tomatoes in a row.”

— Katherine Mansfield

65. “Life never become a habit to me. It’s always a marvel.”

— Katherine Mansfield

66. “It’s not your fault. Don’t think that. It’s just fate.”

— Katherine Mansfield

67. “She had become really quite expert, she thought, at listening as though she didn’t listen, at sitting in other people’s lives just for a minute while they talked round her.”

— Katherine Mansfield

68. “To work – to work! It is such infinite delight to know that we still have the best things to do.”

— Katherine Mansfield

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

— Katherine Mansfield

70. “That’s all life is – something childish and very natural. Isn’t it?”

— Katherine Mansfield

71. “Oh, impossible. Fancy cream puffs so soon after breakfast. The very idea made one shudder. All the same, two minutes later Jose and Laura were licking their fingers with that absorbed inward look that only comes from whipped cream.”

— Katherine Mansfield

72. “And it seemed to her that kisses, voices, tinkling spoons, laughter, the smell of crushed grass were somehow inside her.”

— Katherine Mansfield

73. “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.”

— Katherine Mansfield

74. “When I say “I fear” – don’t let it disturb you, dearest heart. We all fear when we are in waiting-rooms. Yet we must pass beyond them, and if the other can keep calm, it is all the help we can give each other.”

— Katherine Mansfield

75. “Perhaps it does not matter so very much what it is one loves in this world. But love something one must.”

— Katherine Mansfield

76. “Whenever I prepare for a journey I prepare as though for death. Should I never return, all is in order.”

— Katherine Mansfield

77. “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.”

— Katherine Mansfield

78. “The heavens opened for the sunset to-night. When I had thought the day folded and sealed, came a burst of heavenly bright petals.”

— Katherine Mansfield

79. “Short stories can be like photographs, catching people at some moment in their lives and trapping the memory for ever. There they are, smiling or frowning, looking sad, happy, serious, surprised... And behind those smiles and those frowns lie all the experience of life, the fears and delights, the hopes and the dreams.”

— Katherine Mansfield

80. “Saw the sun rise. A lovely apricot sky with flames in it and then solemn pink. Heavens, how beautiful... I feel so full of love to-day after having seen the sun rise.”

— Katherine Mansfield

81. “I don’t believe other people are ever as foolishly excited as I am while I’m working. How could they be? Writers would have to live in trees.”

— Katherine Mansfield

82. “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.”

— Katherine Mansfield

83. “The truth is that every true admirer of the novels cherishes the happy thought that he alone – reading between the lines – has bcome the secret friend of their author.”

— Katherine Mansfield

84. “I long to do wild, passionate things.”

— Katherine Mansfield

85. “The smell of leaves and wet black earth mingled with the sharp smell of the sea.”

— Katherine Mansfield

86. “I believe that people are like portmanteaux – packed with certain things, started going, thrown about, tossed away, dumped down, lost and found, half emptied suddenly, or squeezed fatter than ever, until finally the Ultimate Porter swings them on to the Ultimate Train and away they rattle...”

— Katherine Mansfield

87. “Then something immense came into view; an enormous shock-haired giant with his arms stretched out. It was the big gum-tree outside Mrs. Stubbs’ shop, and as they passed by there was a strong whiff of eucalyptus. And now big spots of light gleamed in the mist. The shepherd.”

— Katherine Mansfield

88. “Once we have learned to read, meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness.”

— Katherine Mansfield

89. “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.”

— Katherine Mansfield

90. “There are in life as many aspects as attitudes towards it, and aspects change with attitudes.”

— Katherine Mansfield

91. “There were all her feelings for him, sharp and defined, one as true as the other. And there was the other, this hatred, just as real as the rest. She could have done her feelings up in little packets and given them to Stanley. She longed to hand him that last one, for a surprise. She could see his eyes as he opened that...”

— Katherine Mansfield

92. “Regret is an appalling waste of time.”

— Katherine Mansfield

93. “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.”

— Katherine Mansfield

94. “We are solitary creatures au fond. It hapens so rarely that one feels another understands. But when one does feel it, it’s not only a joy, it’s a help and comfort in dark moments.”

— Katherine Mansfield

95. “Oh, how quickly things changed! Why didn’t happiness last for ever? For ever wasn’t a bit too long.”

— Katherine Mansfield

96. “The whole world shall be ours because of our love.”

— Katherine Mansfield

97. “Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change.”

— Katherine Mansfield

98. “Better to write twaddle, anything, than nothing at all.”

— Katherine Mansfield

99. “That is the fearful part of having been near death. One knows how easy it is to die. The barriers that are up for everybody else are down for you, and you’ve only to slip through.”

— Katherine Mansfield

100. “To long for everything: sorrow; to accept everything: joy.”

— Katherine Mansfield