Quotes by Margaret Anderson

“Life for me has been exactly what I thought it would be, a cake, which I have eaten and had too”

“It is rarely that you see an American writer who is not hopelessly sane.”

“I have always fought for ideas -- until I learned that it isnt ideas but grief, struggle, and flashes of vision which enlighten.”

“I have always suspected that too much knowledge is a dangerous thing. It is a boon to people who dont have deep feelings; their pleasure comes from what they know. . . . But this only emphasizes the difference between the artist and the scholar.”

“I wasnt born to be a fighter. The causes I have fought for have invariably been causes that should have been gained by a delicate suggestion. Since they never were, I made myself into a fighter.”

“Intellectuals are too sentimental for me.”

“My greatest enemy is reality. I have fought it successfully for thirty years.”

“My unreality is chiefly this: I have never felt much like a human being. Its a splendid feeling.”

“. . . the great thing to learn about life is, first, not to do what you dont want to do, and, second, to do what you do want to do.”

“We just felt like what we were doing would be appreciated by someone else. Weve enjoyed it, but its nice to pass it on and not just put it away in a drawer somewhere.”

I have always fought for ideas - until I learned that it isnt ideas but grief struggle and flashes of vision which enlighten.

In real love you want the other persons good.

The great thing to learn about life is first not to do what you dont want to do and second to do what you do want to do.

My unreality is chiefly this: I have never felt much like a human being. Its a splendid feeling.

Paris is the city in which one loves to live. Sometimes I think this is because it is the only city in the world where you can step out of a railway station—the Gare DOrsay—and see, simultaneously, the chief enchantments: the Seine with its bridges and bookstalls, the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Tuileries Gardens, the Place de la Concorde, the beginning of the Champs Elysees—nearly everything except the Luxembourg Gardens and the Palais Royal. But what other city offers as much as you leave a train?

Intellectuals are too sentimental for me.

In real love you want the other persons good. In romantic love you want the other person.