Top 50 Phyllis Bottome Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “There are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties, or you alter yourself to meet them.”

— Phyllis Bottome

2. “There’s nothing final about a mistake, except its being taken as final.”

— Phyllis Bottome

3. “Truth is its own defense.”

— Phyllis Bottome

4. “No emergency excuses you from exercising tolerance.”

— Phyllis Bottome

5. “Life was a series of messes, and one spent one’s time cleaning them up; if one had any heart at all one also gave a part of one’s time to cleaning up those of other people.”

— Phyllis Bottome

6. “All persecution is a sign of fear; for if we did not fear the power of an opinion different from our own, we should not mind others holding it.”

— Phyllis Bottome

7. “Where there is laughter there is always more health than sickness.”

— Phyllis Bottome

8. “Feelings change facts...”

— Phyllis Bottome

9. “Morale is not a single instinct. It has many ingredients. A sense of personal responsibility, the natural courage of an individual, the amount of his acquired self-discipline – and above all his interest in others – these together make up the spirit of morale.”

— Phyllis Bottome

10. “Knowledge cannot be changed, but the use to which it may be put can very easily be changed.”

— Phyllis Bottome

11. “Truth is no man’s slave – but lies – what magnificent servants they make...”

— Phyllis Bottome

12. “Truth, though it has many disadvantages, is at least changeless. You can always find it where you left it.”

— Phyllis Bottome

13. “Things that happen, however painful they are at the time, do not matter very much for long. Only how we behave to them matters.”

— Phyllis Bottome

14. “Some of us cling to our curses if we haven’t anything better to cling to!”

— Phyllis Bottome

15. “It’s a good thing to learn early that other people’s opinions do not matter, unless they happen to be true.”

— Phyllis Bottome

16. “A refugee is as helpless as a new born child – but not so appealing! Besides, a new born child has no memories!”

— Phyllis Bottome

17. “It is a very dangerous thing to have an idea that you will not practice.”

— Phyllis Bottome

18. “A desire that has never been fulfilled is considerably less acute than one that has been fulfilled and then checked at the source.”

— Phyllis Bottome

19. “If money had been the way to save the world, Christ himself would have been rich.”

— Phyllis Bottome

20. “To be in the right is often an expensive business.”

— Phyllis Bottome

21. “A man whose every exertion is bent upon showing up the flaws in his wife’s character must be at least partially responsible for some of them.”

— Phyllis Bottome

22. “Time indeed has very little to do with living except at its beginning or near its end.”

— Phyllis Bottome

23. “People who talk of new lives believe there will be no new troubles.”

— Phyllis Bottome

24. “When you know a person particularly well, you cannot escape their ruffled feelings.”

— Phyllis Bottome

25. “A red-hot belief in eternal glory is probably the best antidote to human panic that there is.”

— Phyllis Bottome

26. “What are so mysterious as the eyes of a child?”

— Phyllis Bottome

27. “Our responsibility to ourselves comes first – because in a sense what one is oneself is the responsibility that one has for others!”

— Phyllis Bottome

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

28. “If a writer is true to his characters they will give him his plot. Observations must play second fiddle to integrity.”

— Phyllis Bottome

29. “Nobody can afford to appear more pleasant than they really are!”

— Phyllis Bottome

30. “A blossom must break the sheath it has been sheltered by.”

— Phyllis Bottome

31. “When lightning strikes, the mouse is sometimes burned with the farm.”

— Phyllis Bottome

32. “When a reserved person once begins to talk, nothing can stop him; and he does not want to have to listen, until he has quite finished his unfamiliar exertion.”

— Phyllis Bottome

33. “Human beings don’t show, any more than cities at dusk, their real necessities! And yet if you looked – past the circle of outside lights, through the street walls still standing – into the want and emptiness within!”

— Phyllis Bottome

34. “Every hen thinks she has laid the best egg! Can we not all believe as we choose? But the choice of others – what is that to us? Let them alone...”

— Phyllis Bottome

35. “Anger is like mild, it should not be kept too long.”

— Phyllis Bottome

36. “Curses are children of hate; they belong to the wrong family! Prayers are better than curses!”

— Phyllis Bottome

37. “There is no thermometer for wants!”

— Phyllis Bottome

38. “Jane had that happy disposition which would like to imagine that every one really wishes the well-being of his neighbour and struggles, though sometimes rather disastrously, to help him towards it.”

— Phyllis Bottome

39. “Death deceives relations often, and doctors sometimes, but the patient – never.”

— Phyllis Bottome

40. “When we refuse to accept our limitations, Nature, who is a stern realist, pays us out.”

— Phyllis Bottome

41. “She believed in letting children have a certain amount of rope, and only intervened at the last moment, in order to prevent their hanging themselves by it.”

— Phyllis Bottome

42. “Curiosity is the only thing that really carries through time, isn’t it? The creative curiosity, I mean, which fights its way into expression?”

— Phyllis Bottome

43. “The two best subjects for conversation are talking shop and making love.”

— Phyllis Bottome

44. “To see a shadow and think it is a tree that is a pity; but to see a tree and to think it a shadow can be fatal.”

— Phyllis Bottome

45. “To be a Jew is to be strong with a strength that has outlived persecutions. It is to be wise against ignorance, honest against piracy, harmless against evil, kind against cruelty.”

— Phyllis Bottome

Featured in: Strong Quotes

46. “Taboos on the human heart are more dangerous than any risk we run by using our emotions. Sensation is the life of man; it is his actual energy. To suppress it is to lose creative power!”

— Phyllis Bottome

47. “This is the real tragedy of mankind, that until now the spirit of man has not been able to free itself, even along the path of its own development, from the tentacles of self-deception.”

— Phyllis Bottome

48. “That a Jew is despised or persecuted is bad for him, of course-but far worse for the Christian who does it-for although persecuted he can remain a good Jew-whereas no Christian who persecutes can possibly remain-if he ever was one-a good Christian.”

— Phyllis Bottome

49. “We cannot alter facts, but we can alter our ways of looking at them.”

— Phyllis Bottome

50. “Personally, I think it’s a good way to let a child start right in with the laws of Nature before he’s old enough to be surprised at them.”

— Phyllis Bottome