Top 40 Radclyffe Hall Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Life’s not all beer and skittles.”

— Radclyffe Hall

2. “The world hid its head in the sands of convention, so that by seeing nothing it might avoid Truth.”

— Radclyffe Hall

3. “Man could not live by darkness alone, one point of light he must have for salvation – one point of light.”

— Radclyffe Hall

4. “If our love is a sin, then heaven must be full of such tender and selfless sinning as ours.”

— Radclyffe Hall

5. “It is bad for the soul to know itself a coward, it is apt to take refuge in mere wordy violence.”

— Radclyffe Hall

6. “Nothing appears to succeed like success in a world that is principally made up of failure.”

— Radclyffe Hall

7. “Too late, too late, your love gave me life. Here am I the creature you made through your loving; by your passion you created the thing that I am. Who are you to deny me the right to love? But for you I need never have known existence.”

— Radclyffe Hall

8. “A great many women can feel and behave like men. Very few of them can behave like gentlemen.”

— Radclyffe Hall

9. “For the Celtic soul is the stronghold of dreams, of longings come down the dim paths of the ages; and within it there dwells a vague discontent, so that it must for ever go questing. And.”

— Radclyffe Hall

10. “Give us also the right to our existence!”

— Radclyffe Hall

11. “What a terrible thing could be freedom. Trees were free when they were uprooted by the wind; ships were free when they were torn from their moorings; men were free when they were cast out of their homes – free to starve, free to perish of cold and hunger.”

— Radclyffe Hall

12. “Wars come and wars go but the world does not change: it will always forget an indebtedness which it thinks it expedient not to remember.”

— Radclyffe Hall

13. “What remained? Loneliness, or worse still, far worse because it so deeply degraded the spirit, a life of perpetual subterfuge, of guarded opinions and guarded actions, of lies of omission if not of speech, of becoming an accomplice in the world’s injustice by maintaining at all times a judicious silence, making and keeping the friends one respected, on false pretences, because if they knew they would turn aside, even the friends one respected.”

— Radclyffe Hall

14. “Strange it is, but unforgettable moments are often connected with very small happenings, happenings that assume fictitious proportions, especially.”

— Radclyffe Hall

15. “The eyes of the young are drawn to the stars, and the spirit of youth is seldom earth-bound.”

— Radclyffe Hall

16. “Man could not live by darkness alone, one point of light he must have for salvation – one point of light. The most perfect Being of all had cried for light in His darkness – even He, the most perfect Being of all.”

— Radclyffe Hall

17. “Life had already taught Stephen one thing, and that was that never must human beings be allowed to suspect that a creature fears them. The fear of the one is a spur to the many, for the primitive hunting instinct dies hard – it is better to face a hostile world than to turn one’s back for a moment.”

— Radclyffe Hall

18. “Who are you to deny me the right to love?”

— Radclyffe Hall

19. “Writing, it was like a heavenly balm, it was like the flowing out of deep waters, it was like the lifting of a load from the spirit; it brought with it a sense of relief, of assuagement. One could say things in writing without feeling self-conscious, without feeling shy and ashamed and foolish – one could even write of the days of young Nelson, smiling a very little as one did so.”

— Radclyffe Hall

20. “What could she do, bound as she was by the tyranny of silence? She dared not explain the girl to herself... that wilfully selfish tyranny of silence evolved by a crafty old ostrich of a world for its own well-being and comfort. The world hid its head in the sands of convention, so that seeing nothing it might avoid Truth... if silence is golden it is also in this case, very expedient.”

— Radclyffe Hall

21. “My dear, don’t be foolish, there’s nothing strange about you, someday you may meet a man you can love. And supposing you don’t, well, what of it, Stephen? Marriage isn’t the only career for a woman.”

— Radclyffe Hall

22. “To keep life in his desolate, long-suffering soul, he had stored his mind with much profound learning. So now many poor devils went to him for advice, which he never refused though he gave it sadly. It was always the same: ‘Do the best you can, no man can do more – but never stop fighting. For us there is no sin so great as despair, and perhaps no virtue so vital as courage.”

— Radclyffe Hall

23. “For the sake of all the others who are like you, but less strong and less gifted perhaps, many of them, it’s up to you to have the courage to make good.”

— Radclyffe Hall

24. “A few dauntless souls even enter the chemist’s – that shamelessly anatomical chemist’s, whose wares do not figure in school manuals on the practical uses of rubber.”

— Radclyffe Hall

25. “I want you to be wise for your own sake, Stephen, because at the best life requires great wisdom. I want you to learn to make friends of your books; someday you may need them, because – ’ He hesitated, ’because you mayn’t find life at all easy, we none of us do, and books are good friends.”

— Radclyffe Hall

26. “There is something that mankind can never destroy in spite of an unreasoning will to destruction, and this is its own idealism, that integral part of its very being.”

— Radclyffe Hall

27. “For your own sake you must go to Oxford, you’ll need every weapon your brain can give you; being what you are you’ll need every weapon.”

— Radclyffe Hall

28. “In her they instinctively sensed an outlaw, and theirs was the task of policing nature.”

— Radclyffe Hall

29. “The eyes themselves were the eyes of a writer, always a little tired in expression.”

— Radclyffe Hall

30. “But do try to remember this: even the world’s not so black as it’s painted.”

— Radclyffe Hall

31. “Oh, yes – very easy to talk about death, but not so easy to manage the dying.”

— Radclyffe Hall

32. “For together with those who themselves being normal, had long put intellects above bodies, were writers, painters, musicians and scholars, men and women who, set apart from their birth, had determined to hack out a niche in existence.”

— Radclyffe Hall

33. “Why should this girl have crossed Stephen’s path, or indeed Stephen hers, if it came to that matter? Was not the world large enough for them both? Perhaps not – or perhaps the event of their meeting had already been written upon tablets of stone by some wise if relentless recording finger.”

— Radclyffe Hall

34. “Love is the sweetest monotony that was ever conceived of by the Creator.”

— Radclyffe Hall

35. “An ungentlemanly war it will be,′ he grumbled. ‘Will I lead my men with a sword? Ah, but no! I will lead my men with a dirty revolver in my hand. Parbleu! Such is modern warfare! A machine could do the whole cursed thing better – we shall all be nothing but machines in this war.”

— Radclyffe Hall

36. “Susan glanced down and smiled. ‘Go away, Sieglinde,’ she said, giving her a push. It’s food, not me, you fraud!’ Sieglinde regained her balance with the dexterity of a tight-rope walker. She sighed and whinnied under her breath continuously, while her paws took a firmer grip of Susan’s knee.”

— Radclyffe Hall

37. “Writing, it was like a heavenly balm, it was like the flowing out of deep waters, it was like the lifting of a load from the spirit; it brought with it a sense of relief, of assuagement.”

— Radclyffe Hall

38. “Reuben grinned and chewed more vigorously than ever; he had the measure of his master’s foot to a nicety. The sun felt actually hot, and Hilary, in his heavy tweeds, began to be less inclined for the long walk over stubbly fields. His eye roved for a suitable place to rest, which he finally discovered under a hedge.”

— Radclyffe Hall

39. “She loved deeply, far more deeply than many a one who could fearlessly proclaim himself a lover. Since this is a hard and sad truth for the telling; those whom nature has sacrificed to her ends – her mysterious ends that often lie hidden – are sometimes endowed with a vast will to loving, with an endless capacity for suffering also, which must go hand in hand with their love.”

— Radclyffe Hall

40. “The sorrows of childhood are mercifully passing, for it is only when maturity has rendered soil mellow that grief will root very deeply. Stephen’s.”

— Radclyffe Hall

41. “After she had gone he sat on alone, and the lie was still bitter to his spirit as he sat there, and he covered his face for the shame that was in him – but because of the love that was in him he wept.”

— Radclyffe Hall

42. “Yes, that’s why I’m so frightened, you make me feel strong –.”

— Radclyffe Hall

43. “Have you ever thought about the enormous courage of trees? I have, and it seems to me amazing, The Lord dumps them down and they just gotta stick it, no matter what happens.”

— Radclyffe Hall

44. “Language is surely too small a vessel to contain these emotions of mind and body that have somehow awakened a response in the spirit.”

— Radclyffe Hall

45. “I have put my pen at the service of some of the most persecuted and misunderstood people in the world. So far as I know nothing of the kind has ever been attempted before in fiction.”

— Radclyffe Hall