Top 50 Penelope Fitzgerald Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “An unjust punishment is never forgotten.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

2. “Understanding makes the mind lazy.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

3. “There’s two ways to be selfish. You can think too much about yourself, or you can think too little about others. You’re selfish both ways.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

4. “A good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life, and as such it must surely be a necessary commodity.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

Featured in: Reading Quotes

5. “It is interesting to note that everyone has a different take on the world, a different opinion, and given the same inputs have completely different outputs.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

6. “Her view of the world was that it divided into ‘exterminators’ and ‘exterminatees’. She would say: ‘I am drawn to people who seem to have been born defeated or even profoundly lost.’ She was a humorous writer with a tragic sense of life.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

7. “On the whole, I think you should write biographies of those you admire and respect, and novels about human beings who you think are sadly mistaken.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

8. “I have remained true to my deepest convictions. I mean the courage of those who are born to be defeated, the weaknesses of the strong, and the tragedy of misunderstandings and missed opportunities, which I have done my best to treat as comedy – for otherwise how can we manage to bear it?”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

Featured in: Strong Quotes

9. “Morality is seldom a safe guide for human conduct.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

10. “Helping other people is a drug so dangerous that there is no cure short of total abstention.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

11. “Courage and endurance are useless if they are never tested.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

12. “I have read Lolita, as you requested. It is a good book, and therefore you should try to sell it to the inhabitants of Hardborough. They won’t understand it, but that is all to the good. Understanding makes the mind lazy.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

13. “I believe that people should write biographies only about people they love, or understand, or both. Novels, on the other hand, are often better if they’re about people the writer doesn’t like very much.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

14. “Opening the shop gave her, every morning, the same feeling of promise and opportunity. The books stood as neatly ranged as Gipping’s vegetables, ready for all comers.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

15. “Florence had noticed one or two eccentricities in herself lately, which might be the result of hard work, or of age, or of living alone. When the letters came, for example, she often found herself wasting time in looking at the postmarks and wondering whoever they could be from, instead of opening them in a sensible manner and finding out at once.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

16. “Behind their dark glass, the mad own nothing.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

17. “A word of advice. If, as a young man, student, you are tormented by a desire for women, it is best to get out into the fresh air as much as possible.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

18. “There isn’t one kind of happiness, there’s all kinds. Decision is torment for anyone with imagination. When you decide, you multiply the things you might have done and now never can.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

19. “But time given to wishing for what can’t be is not only spent, but wasted, and for all that we waste we shall be accountable.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

20. “Her courage, after all, was only a determination to survive. The.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

21. “Algebra, like laudanum, deadens pain, Fritz wrote.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

22. “If they don’t depend on true evidence, scientists are no better than gossips.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

23. “He said, aloud, ‘The external world is the world of shadows. It throws its shadows into the kingdom of light. How different they will appear when this darkness is gone and the shadow-body has passed away. The universe, after all, is within us. The way leads inward, always inwards.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

24. “If you can’t face living your life day by day, you must live it minute by minute.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

25. “Experiences aren’t given to us to be ‘got over,’ otherwise they would hardly be experiences.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

26. “Not to succeed in one thing is to fail in all.’ Far more frightening than any poltergeist is the spectre of loneliness in old age.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

27. “Broadcasting House was in fact dedicated to the strangest project of the war, or of any war, that is, telling the truth. Without prompting, the BBC had decided that truth was more important than consolation, and, in the long run, would be more effective. And yet there was no guarantee of this. Truth ensures trust, but not victory, or even happiness.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

28. “I think one should never be too busy to teach those who are anxious to learn.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

29. “All distances are the same to those who don’t meet.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

30. “The barge anchors were unrecognisable as such, more like crustaceans, specimens of some giant type long since discarded by Nature, but still clinging to their old habitat, sunk in the deep pits they had made in the foreshore. But under the ground they were half rusted away. Dreadnought’s anchor had come up easily enough when the salvage tug came to dispose of her. The mud which held so tenaciously could also give way in a moment, if conditions altered.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

31. “They started with Big Ben. It’s always got to be relayed direct from Westminster, the real thing, never from disc. That’s got to be firmly fixed in the listeners’ minds. Then, if Big Ben is silent, the public will know that the war has taken a distinctly unpleasant turn.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

32. “She had once seen a heron flying across the estuary and trying, while it was on the wing, to swallow an eel which it had caught. The eel, in turn, was struggling to escape from the gullet of the heron and appeared a quarter, a half, or occasionally three-quarters of the way out. The indecision expressed by both creatures was pitiable. They had taken on too much.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

33. “If there’s even one person who might be hurt by a decision, you should never make it.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

34. “Duty is what no-one else will do at the moment.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

35. “Old age is not the same thing as historical interest,’ he said. ‘Otherwise we should both of us be more interesting than we are.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

36. “She had a kind heart, though that is not of much use when it comes to the matter of self-preservation.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

37. “Opportunity, after all, is only another word for temptation.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

38. “To every separate person a thing is what he thinks it is – in other words, not a thing, but a think.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

39. “It’s very good for an idea to be commonplace. The important thing is that a new idea should develop out of what is already there so that it soon becomes an old acquaintance. Old acquaintances aren’t by any means always welcome, but at least one can’t be mistaken as to who or what they are.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

40. “It was defeat, but defeat is less unwelcome when you are tired.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

41. “I’m afraid I’m not accustomed to the poor light, Mrs James.’ ‘Look at the sky, father. Keep your eyes on the lightest part of the sky and they’ll adapt little by little.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

42. “The body, then, has a mind of its own. It must follow, then, that the Mind has a body of its own, even if it’s like nothing that we can see around us, or have ever seen.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

43. “Her feeling for Mr Brooks was so much the most important part of her life that it seemed like something which did not belong to her, but which she had to carry about with her, at work or in her room, there was no difference. She had a kind of affection, too, for the love itself, which was so strong, but maintained itself on so little. There had been a time, not at all long ago, when she hadn’t had this responsibility, but it was hard for her to remember how she had felt then.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

44. “Annie – although she also knew that those who don’t speak have to pay it off in thinking – was resolved on silence. Whatever happened, and after all she was obliged to see Mr brooks two or three times every day, though she by no means looked forward to it, feeling herself more truly alive when she could picture him steadily without seeing him – whatever happened, he needn’t know how daft she was.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

45. “Let’s say that matters hadn’t gone quite right with you, I mean personal matters, would you be able to find words to say exactly what was wrong?’ ‘I’m afraid so, yes, I would.’ ‘That might be useful, of course.’ ‘Like manufacturers’ instructions. In case of failure, try words.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

46. “Tilda cared nothing for the future, and had, as a result, a great capacity for happiness.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

47. “Richard was the kind of man who has two clean handkerchiefs on him at half past three in the morning.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

48. “She ought to go down to the beach. It was Thursday, early closing, and it seemed ungrateful to live so close to the sea and never look at it for weeks on end.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

49. “She did not know that morality is seldom a safe guide for human conduct.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald

50. “I enjoy very little leisure in the evenings. But don’t misunderstand me, I find a good book at my bedside of incalculable value. When I eventually retire I’ve no sooner read a few pages than I’m overwhelmed with sleep.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald