Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by John Galsworthy (English Novelist, Playwright)

John Galsworthy (1867–1933) was an English novelist and playwright. One of the most famous writers of the early 20th century, he wrote about the transitions and contrasts between pre-and post-World War I England.

Born in a wealthy family in Kingston Hill, Surrey, Galsworthy went to Harrow and New College, Oxford. He began his career as a lawyer but took up writing after meeting Joseph Conrad on a ship sailing from Australia to South Africa. Galsworthy’s first book, a collection of short stories, From the Four Winds (1897,) was published under the pseudonym John Sinjohn.

Galsworthy is remembered chiefly for his series of novels known collectively as The Forsyte Saga (1906–28.) Consisting of The Man of Property (1906,) In Chancery (1920) and To Let (1921,) this series traces the declining fortunes of a prosperous middle-class family in the years leading up to World War I. The second cycle of the saga, A Modern Comedy (1929,) includes The White Mankey (1924,) The Silver Spoon (1926,) and Swan Song (1928,) and examines the plight of the postwar generation, whose world has collapsed.

Among Galsworthy’s other novels are The Island Pharisees (1904,) The Country House (1907,) Fraternity (1909,) and The Patrician (1911.) Other chronicles include End of the Chapter (1931–33.)

A prolific playwright, Galsworthy produced 31 full-length plays for the London stage, including Strife (1909,) Justice (1910,) The Skin Game (1920,) A Bit o’ Love (1915) and Loyalties (1922.)

Galsworthy was the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932. He used the prize money to help establish an international organization for various literary causes called PEN (International Association of Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, and Novelists.)

In 1967, Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga was adapted into a BBC TV mini-series, which was hugely popular in England.

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by John Galsworthy

One’s eyes are what one is, one’s mouth is what one becomes.
John Galsworthy
Topics: Eyes

Come! Let us lay a lance in rest,
And tilt at windmills under a wild sky!
For who would live so petty and unblest
That dare not tilt at something ere he die;
Rather than, screened by safe majority,
Preserve his little life to little end,
And never raise a rebel cry!
John Galsworthy

Public opinion is always in advance of the law.
John Galsworthy

There will always be about the same percentage of people capable of real love, and there will always be about the same percentage of people who aren’t.
John Galsworthy
Topics: Love

Religion was nearly dead because there was no longer real belief in future life; but something was struggling to take its place—service—social service—the ants creed, the bees creed.
John Galsworthy
Topics: Welfare

Boys and girls should be taught to think first of others in material things; they should be infected with the wisdom to know that in making smooth the way of all lies the road to their own health and happiness.
John Galsworthy
Topics: Education

A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.
John Galsworthy
Topics: Action, Unhappiness

States should spend money and effort on this great all-underlying matter of spiritual education as they have hitherto spent them on beating and destroying each other.
John Galsworthy
Topics: Education

The measure of a democracy is the measure of the freedom of its humblest citizens.
John Galsworthy
Topics: Freedom

Honesty of thought and speech and written word is a jewel, and they who curb prejudice and seek honorably to know and speak the truth are the only builders of a better life.
John Galsworthy
Topics: Honesty, Truth

Headlines twice the size of the events.
John Galsworthy
Topics: News, Events

Nations like men, can be healthy and happy, though comparatively poor… . Wealth is a means to an end, not the end itself. As a synonym for health and happiness, it has had a fair trial and failed dismally.
John Galsworthy
Topics: Wealth, Poverty

Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.
John Galsworthy
Topics: Idealism, Ideals

The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy.
John Galsworthy
Topics: Beginnings

When Man evolved Pity, he did a queer thing—deprived himself of the power of living life as it is without wishing it to become something different.
John Galsworthy
Topics: Sympathy

Essential characteristics of a gentleman: The will to put himself in the place of others; the horror of forcing others into positions from which he would himself recoil; the power to do what seems to him to be right, without considering what others may say or think.
John Galsworthy
Topics: Conviction

If you do not think about the future, you cannot have one.
John Galsworthy
Topics: Future, The Future

There is just one rule for politicians all over the world. Don’t say in Power what you say in Opposition: if you do you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.
John Galsworthy
Topics: Politics, Politicians

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