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Top 25 Patrick White Quotes (2025 Update)

Patrick White Quote: “Life is full of alternatives but no choice.”

1. “Life is full of alternatives but no choice.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “To make yourself, it is also necessary to destroy yourself.”

2. “To make yourself, it is also necessary to destroy yourself.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “If truth is not acceptable, it becomes the imagination of others.”

3. “If truth is not acceptable, it becomes the imagination of others.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “The mystery of life is not salved by success, which is an end in itself, but in failure, in perpetual struggle, in becoming.”

4. “The mystery of life is not salved by success, which is an end in itself, but in failure, in perpetual struggle, in becoming.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “To understand the stars would spoil their appearance.”

5. “To understand the stars would spoil their appearance.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “The map? I will first make it.”

6. “The map? I will first make it.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “She would have liked to sit upon a rock and listen to words, not of any man, but detached, mysterious, poetic words that she alone would interpret through some sense inherited from sleep.”

7. “She would have liked to sit upon a rock and listen to words, not of any man, but detached, mysterious, poetic words that she alone would interpret through some sense inherited from sleep.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “Mrs. Trotter made a sincere though wrong sound, while opening her handbag to look for help.”

8. “Mrs. Trotter made a sincere though wrong sound, while opening her handbag to look for help.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “I am compelled into this country.”

9. “I am compelled into this country.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “Reason finally holds a gun at its head – and does not always miss.”

10. “Reason finally holds a gun at its head – and does not always miss.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “It was Sunday, and Mumma had gone next door with Lena and the little ones. Under the pepper tree in the yard Pa was sorting, counting, the empty bottles he would sell back: the bottles going clink clink as Pa stuck them in the sack. The fowls were fluffing in the dust and sun: that crook-neck white pullet Mumma said she would hit on the head if only she had the courage to; but she hadn’t.”

11. “It was Sunday, and Mumma had gone next door with Lena and the little ones. Under the pepper tree in the yard Pa was sorting, counting, the empty bottles he would sell back: the bottles going clink clink as Pa stuck them in the sack. The fowls were fluffing in the dust and sun: that crook-neck white pullet Mumma said she would hit on the head if only she had the courage to; but she hadn’t.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “She had begun to read in the beginning as a protection from the frightening and unpleasant things. She continued because, apart from the story, literature brought with it a kind of gentility for which she craved.”

12. “She had begun to read in the beginning as a protection from the frightening and unpleasant things. She continued because, apart from the story, literature brought with it a kind of gentility for which she craved.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “In general,′ Voss replied, ’it is necessary to communicate without knowledge of the language.”

13. “In general,′ Voss replied, ’it is necessary to communicate without knowledge of the language.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “They walked on rather aimlessly. He hoped she wouldn’t notice he was touched, because he wouldn’t have known how to explain why. Here lay the great discrepancy between aesthetic truth and sleazy reality.”

14. “They walked on rather aimlessly. He hoped she wouldn’t notice he was touched, because he wouldn’t have known how to explain why. Here lay the great discrepancy between aesthetic truth and sleazy reality.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “If I have not lost my mind I can sometimes hear it preparing to defect.”

15. “If I have not lost my mind I can sometimes hear it preparing to defect.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “I would like to believe in the myth that we grow wiser with age. In a sense my disbelief is wisdom. Those of a middle generation, if charitable or sentimental, subscribe to the wisdom myth, while the callous see us as dispensable objects, like broken furniture or dead flowers. For the young we scarcely exist unless we are unavoidable members of the same family, farting, slobbering, perpetually mislaying teeth and bifocals.”

16. “I would like to believe in the myth that we grow wiser with age. In a sense my disbelief is wisdom. Those of a middle generation, if charitable or sentimental, subscribe to the wisdom myth, while the callous see us as dispensable objects, like broken furniture or dead flowers. For the young we scarcely exist unless we are unavoidable members of the same family, farting, slobbering, perpetually mislaying teeth and bifocals.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “I expect we are all jealous of the women in their past, but how much less exciting if the women had not kept the bed warm.”

17. “I expect we are all jealous of the women in their past, but how much less exciting if the women had not kept the bed warm.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “Human behavior is a series of lunges, of which, it is sometimes sensed, the direction is inevitable.”

18. “Human behavior is a series of lunges, of which, it is sometimes sensed, the direction is inevitable.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “The worst thing about love between human beings is that when you are prepared to love them they don’t want it; when they do its you who can’t bear the idea.”

19. “The worst thing about love between human beings is that when you are prepared to love them they don’t want it; when they do its you who can’t bear the idea.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “Two people do not lose themselves at the identical moment, or else they might find each other, and be saved. It is not as simple as that.”

20. “Two people do not lose themselves at the identical moment, or else they might find each other, and be saved. It is not as simple as that.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “Because he had nothing to hide, he did perhaps appear to have forfeited a little of his strength. But that is the irony of honesty.”

21. “Because he had nothing to hide, he did perhaps appear to have forfeited a little of his strength. But that is the irony of honesty.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “His legend will be written down, eventually, by those who are troubled by it.”

22. “His legend will be written down, eventually, by those who are troubled by it.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “Superficially my war was a comfortable exercise in futility carried out in a grand Scottish hotel amongst the bridge players and swillers of easy-come-by whisky. My chest got me out of active service and into guilt, as I wrote two, or is it three of the novels for which I am now acclaimed.”

23. “Superficially my war was a comfortable exercise in futility carried out in a grand Scottish hotel amongst the bridge players and swillers of easy-come-by whisky. My chest got me out of active service and into guilt, as I wrote two, or is it three of the novels for which I am now acclaimed.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “He himself, he realized, had always been most abominably frightened, even at the height of his divine power, a frail god upon a rickety throne, afraid of opening letters, of making decisions, afraid of the instinctive knowledge in the eyes of mules, of the innocent eyes of good men, of the elastic nature of the passions, even of the devotion he had received from some men, and one woman, and dogs.”

24. “He himself, he realized, had always been most abominably frightened, even at the height of his divine power, a frail god upon a rickety throne, afraid of opening letters, of making decisions, afraid of the instinctive knowledge in the eyes of mules, of the innocent eyes of good men, of the elastic nature of the passions, even of the devotion he had received from some men, and one woman, and dogs.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “There are moments when the eyes flow into each other. Then the souls are wrapped around each other across a distance.”

25. “There are moments when the eyes flow into each other. Then the souls are wrapped around each other across a distance.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “As it is I’m a dated novelist, whom hardly anybody reads, or if they do, most of them don’t understand what I am on about. Certainly I wish I had never written Voss, which is going to be everybody’s albatross.”

26. “As it is I’m a dated novelist, whom hardly anybody reads, or if they do, most of them don’t understand what I am on about. Certainly I wish I had never written Voss, which is going to be everybody’s albatross.”

— Patrick White

Patrick White Quote: “At times his arrogance did resolve itself into simplicity, though it was difficult, especially for strangers, to distinguish these occasions.”

27. “At times his arrogance did resolve itself into simplicity, though it was difficult, especially for strangers, to distinguish these occasions.”

— Patrick White

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