Top 140 T.H. White Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “You think education is something to be done when all else fails?”

— T.H. White

52. “Cavall came simply and gave his heart and soul.”

— T.H. White

53. “Jenny, all my life I have wanted to do miracles. I have wanted to be holy. I suppose it was ambition or pride or some other unworthy thing. It was not enough for me to conquer the world – I wanted to conquer heaven too.”

— T.H. White

54. “The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails.”

— T.H. White

55. “Was it the wicked leaders who led innocent populations to slaughter, or was it wicked populations who chose leaders after their own hearts?”

— T.H. White

56. “He was neither clever nor sensitive, but he was loyal – stubbornly sometimes, and even annoyingly and stupidly so in later life.”

— T.H. White

57. “Elaine had done the ungraceful thing as usual. Guenever, in similar circumstances, would have been sure to grow pale and interesting – but Elaine had only grown plump.”

— T.H. White

58. “If I were to be made a knight,” said the Wart, staring dreamily into the fire, “I should insist on doing my vigil by myself, as Hob does with his hawks, and I should pray to God to let me encounter all the evil in the world in my own person, so that if I conquered there would be none left, and, if I were defeated, I would be the one to suffer for it.”

— T.H. White

59. “For instance, ‘the beer is never clear near here, Dear,’ is unfortunate, even as assonance.”

— T.H. White

60. “Kay,” said Merlyn, suddenly terrible, “thou wast ever a proud and ill-tongued speaker, and a misfortunate one. Thy sorrow will come from thine own mouth.”

— T.H. White

61. “Middle-aged people can balance between believing in God and breaking all the commandments without difficulty.”

— T.H. White

62. “Leave well alone.”

— T.H. White

63. “The Dark and Middle Ages! The Nineteenth Century had an impudent way with its labels. For there, under the window in Arthur’s Gramarye, the sun’s rays flamed from a hundred jewels of stained glass in monasteries and convents, or danced from the pinnacle of cathedrals and castles, which their builders had actually loved. Architecture, in those dark ages of theirs, was such a light-giving passion of the heart that men gave love-names to their fortresses.”

— T.H. White

64. “The eyes, circled by this sad and beautiful darkness, were so sorrowful, lonely, gentle and nobly tragic, that they killed all other emotion except love.”

— T.H. White

65. “The snow-haired Uncle Dap, so old as to be absolutely fabulous, was trying to jump over his walking-stick.”

— T.H. White

66. “They had a year of joy, twelve months of the strange heaven which the salmon know on beds of river shingle, under the gin-clear water. For twenty-four years they were guilty, but this first year was the only one which seemed like happiness. Looking back on it, when they were old, they did not remember that in this year it had ever rained or frozen. The four seasons were coloured like the edge of a rose petal for them.”

— T.H. White

67. “One more try,′ he asked, ‘We are not quite done.’ ‘What is the use of trying?’ ‘It is a thing which people do.”

— T.H. White

68. “We have invented a moral sense which is rotting now that we can’t give it employment, and when a moral sense begins to rot, it is worse than when you had none. I suppose that all endeavors which are directed to a purely worldly end, as my precious civilization was, contain within themselves the germs of their own corruption.”

— T.H. White

69. “You could not give up a human heart as you could give up drinking. The drink was yours, and you could give it up: but your lover’s soul was not your own: it was not at your disposal; you had a duty towards it.”

— T.H. White

70. “He could do what all men wanted to, that is, fly.”

— T.H. White

71. “But they woke him with words, their cruel bright weapons.”

— T.H. White

72. “There would be a day – there must be a day – when he would come back to Gramarye with a new Round Table which had no corners, just as the world had none – a table without boundaries between the nations who would sit to feast there. The hope of making it would lie in culture. If people could be persuaded to read and write, not just to eat and make love, there was still a chance that they might come to reason. BUT.”

— T.H. White

73. “I will tell you something else, King, which may be a surprise for you. It will not happen for hundreds of years, but both of us are to come back.”

— T.H. White

74. “Grown-ups have developed an unpleasant habit of comforting themselves for their degradation by pretending that children are childish.”

— T.H. White

75. “When Other blood spurts from the knife, Then everything is fine.”

— T.H. White

76. “For happiness is only a bye-product of function, as light is a bye-product of the electric current running through the wires. If the current cannot run efficiently, the light does not come. That is why nobody finds happiness, who seeks it on its own account.”

— T.H. White

77. “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.”

— T.H. White

78. “Kings can only use their best tools.”

— T.H. White

79. “The Queen dried her tears and looked at him, smiling like a spring shower. In a minute they were kissing, feeling like the green earth refreshed by rain. They thought that they understood each other once more – but their doubt had been planted. 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

80. “If it takes a million years for a fish to become a reptile, has Man, in our few hundred, altered out of recognition?”

— T.H. White

81. “No, I’m not.” “Yes, you are.” “No, I’m not.” “Yes, you are.” “I said Pax Non.” “You said Pax.” “No, I didn’t.” “Yes, you did.” “No, I didn’t.” “Yes, you did.”

— T.H. White

82. “Merlyn always said that sportsmanship was the curse of the world, and so it is.”

— T.H. White

83. “It was a grey September day, with the blue and copper butterflies flitting in the after-grass, the partridges calling like crickets, the blackberries colouring, and the hazel nuts still nursing their tasteless little kernels in the cradles of cotton wool.”

— T.H. White

84. “A fortnight after the Winchester tournament, while Elaine nursed her hero back to life, Guenever was having a scene with Sir Bors at court. Being a woman-hater, Bors always had instructive scenes with women. He said what he thought, and they said what they thought, and neither of them understood the other a bit.”

— T.H. White

85. “People are dupes, and wicked too. That is what makes it interesting to get them better.”

— T.H. White

86. “It is generally the trustful and optimistic people who can afford to retreat. The loveless and faithless ones are compelled by their pessimism to attack.”

— T.H. White

87. “So little time to pass?” said Merlyn, and a big tear ran down to the end of his nose.”

— T.H. White

88. “You have become the king of a domain in which the popular agitators hate each other for racial reasons, while the nobility fight each other for fun, and neither the racial maniac nor the overlord stops to consider the lot of the common soldier, who is the one person that gets hurt.”

— T.H. White

89. “She had made the bravest protest: I will not be vanquished.”

— T.H. White

90. “Ought to be havin’ a first-rate eddication, at their age. When I was their age I was doin’ all this Latin and stuff.”

— T.H. White

91. “The heart of tragedy does not lie in stealing or taking away. Any featherpated girl can steal a heart. It lies in giving, in putting on, in adding, in smothering without the pillows.”

— T.H. White

92. “There is one fairly good reason for fighting – and that is, if the other man starts it. You see, wars are a great wickedness, perhaps the greatest wickedness of a wicked species. They are so wicked that they must not be allowed. When you can be perfectly certain that the other man started them, then is the time when you might have a sort of duty to stop them.”

— T.H. White

93. “What have you done with Watt?′ You should try to speak with out assonance,” said the wizard. “For instance, ‘the beer is never clear near here, dear,’ is unfortunate, even as assonance.”

— T.H. White

94. “Kay was older and bigger than the Wart, so that he was bound to win in the end, but he was more nervous and imaginative. He could imagine the effect of each blow that was aimed at him, and this weakened his defense. Wart was only an infuriated hurricane.”

— T.H. White

95. “It was called a tribute before a battle and a ransom afterwards.”

— T.H. White

96. “In the course of a long experience of the human race, I have learned that you can never make them understand anything, unless you rub it in.”

— T.H. White

97. “Gilbert White,’ said Merlyn, ‘remarks, or will remark, however you like to put it, that ‘the language of birds is very ancient, and, like other ancient modes of speech, little is said, but much is intended.’ He also says somewhere that ‘the rooks, in the breeding season, attempt sometimes, in the gaiety of their hearts, to sing – but with no great success.”

— T.H. White

98. “The author says people are guilty of “wrecking the present because the future was bound to be a wreck.”

— T.H. White

99. “Wart draggled off to the tower room, where Merlyn was busy knitting himself a woollen night-cap for the winter. “I cast off two together at every other line,” said the magician, “but for some reason it seems to end too sharply. Like an onion. It is the turning of the heel that does one, every time.”

— T.H. White

100. “He had conquered murder only to be faced with war. There were no laws for that.”

— T.H. White