Top 140 T.H. White Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance.”

— T.H. White

2. “Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts uncritically – to those who hardly think about us in return.”

— T.H. White

3. “Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”

— T.H. White

4. “The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then – to learn.”

— T.H. White

5. “Might does not make right! Right makes right!”

— T.H. White

6. “If people reach perfection they vanish, you know.”

— T.H. White

7. “Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”

— T.H. White

8. “The Destiny of Man is to unite, not to divide. If you keep on dividing you end up as a collection of monkeys throwing nuts at each other out of separate trees.”

— T.H. White

9. “The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else do it wrong without comment.”

— T.H. White

10. “We cannot build the future by avenging the past.”

— T.H. White

11. “Those who lived by the sword were forced to die by it.”

— T.H. White

12. “The bravest people are the ones who don’t mind looking like cowards.”

— T.H. White

13. “It is good to put your life in other people’s hands.”

— T.H. White

14. “Is there anything more terrible than perpetual motion, than doing and doing and doing, without a reason, without a consciousness, without a change, without an end?”

— T.H. White

15. “When shall I be dead and rid Of all the wrong my father did? How long, how long ’till spade and hearse Put to sleep my mother’s curse?”

— T.H. White

16. “The word “feral” has a kind of magic potency which allied itself to two other words, “ferocious” and “free.” To revert to a feral state!”

— T.H. White

17. “The fisherman fishes as the urchin eats cream buns, from lust.”

— T.H. White

18. “People commit suicide through weakness, not through strength.”

— T.H. White

19. “Life is too bitter already, without territories and wars and noble feuds.”

— T.H. White

20. “Now, in their love, which was stronger, there were the seeds of hatred and fear and confusion growing at the same time: for love can exist with hatred, each preying on the other, and this is what gives it its greatest fury.”

— T.H. White

21. “Love is a trick played on us by the forces of evolution. Pleasure is the bait laid down by the same. There is only power. Power is of the individual mind but the mind’s power is not enough. Power of the body decides everything in the end and only might is right.”

— T.H. White

22. “It seems, in tragedy, that innocence is not enough.”

— T.H. White

23. “Mordred and Agravaine thought Arthur hypocritical – as all decent men must be, if you assume that decency can’t exist.”

— T.H. White

24. “Everything not forbidden is compulsory.”

— T.H. White

25. “Aviators live by hours, not by days.”

— T.H. White

26. “Believe me, the so-called primitive races who worshipped animals as gods were not so daft as people choose to pretend. At least they were humble. Why should not God have come to the earth as an earth-worm? There are a great many more worms than men, and they do a great deal more good.”

— T.H. White

27. “Wrongs have to be redressed by reason, not by force.”

— T.H. White

28. “The destiny of man is an individualistic destiny.”

— T.H. White

29. “There were thousands of brown books in leather bindings, some chained to the book-shelves and others propped against each other as if they had had too much to drink and did not really trust themselves. These gave out a smell of must and solid brownness which was most secure.”

— T.H. White

30. “All forms of collectivism are mistaken, according to the human skull.”

— T.H. White

31. “Every letter written,” said a medieval abbot, “is a wound inflicted on the devil.”

— T.H. White

32. “You must remember I am the King of England. When you are a king you can’t go executing people as the fancy takes you. A king is the head of his people, and he must stand as an example to them, and do as they wish.”

— T.H. White

33. “Thank God for the aged And for age itself, and illness and the grave. When we are old and ill, and particularly in the coffin, It is no trouble to behave.”

— T.H. White

34. “Only fools want to be great.”

— T.H. White

35. “A lot of brainless unicorns swaggering about and calling themselves educated just because they can push each other off a horse with a bit of a stick! It makes me tired.”

— T.H. White

36. “It is only people who are lacking, or bad, or inferior, who have to be good at things. You have always been full and perfect, so you had nothing to make up for.”

— T.H. White

37. “War is like a fire. One man may start it, but it will spread all over. It is not about one thing in particular.”

— T.H. White

38. “Merlyn took the Wart’s hand and said kindly, “You are young, and do not understand these things. But you will learn that owls are the most courteous, single-hearted and faithful creatures living. You must never be familiar, rude or vulgar with them, or make them look ridiculous. Their mother is Athene, the goddess of wisdom, and, although they are often ready to play the buffoon to amuse you, such conduct is the prerogative of the truly wise. No owl can possibly be called Archie.”

— T.H. White

39. “We have had a good time while we were young, but it is in the nature of Time to fly.”

— T.H. White

40. “Perhaps he does not want to be friends with you until he knows what you are like. With owls, it is never easy-come-easy-go.”

— T.H. White

41. “It is a pity that there are no big creatures to prey on humanity. If there were enough dragons and rocs, perhaps mankind would turn its might against them. Unfortunately man is preyed upon by microbes, which are too small to be appreciated.”

— T.H. White

42. “Nobody can be saved from anything, unless they save themselves.”

— T.H. White

43. “If there is one thing I can’t stand, it is stupidity. I always say that stupidity is the Sin against the Holy Ghost.”

— T.H. White

44. “The fate of this man or that man was less than a drop, although it was a sparkling one, in the great blue motion of the sunlit sea.”

— T.H. White

45. “There are no boundaries among the geese. How can you have boundaries if you fly?”

— T.H. White

46. “I would recommend a solo flight to all prospective suicides. It tends to make clear the issue of whether one enjoys being alive or not.”

— T.H. White

47. “It is the bad people who need to have principles to restrain them.”

— T.H. White

48. “She hardly ever thought of him. He had worn a place for himself in some corner of her heart, as a sea shell, always boring against the rock, might do. The making of the place had been her pain. But now the shell was safely in the rock. It was lodged, and ground no longer.”

— T.H. White

49. “The miracle was that he had been allowed to do a miracle. And ever, says Mallory, Sir Lancelot wept, as he had been a child that had been beaten.”

— T.H. White

50. “They made me see that the world was beautiful if you were beautiful, and that you couldn’t get unless you gave. And you had to give without wanting to get.”

— T.H. White