top of page
"You learn nothing about men by snubbing them and crushing their pride. You must ask them what it is they can do in this world, that they alone can do."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Insight quotes

"It is only when you study and understand people that you begin to see God's principles in them."

"Maybe we're standing like coins on the edge?"Allie considered this. "Meaning?""Meaning, we might be able to shake things up a little, and find a way to come up heads.""Or tails," suggested."

"To sit down means to calm down without rush and fuss, stop and reflect, analyze all pros and cons, count all possible merits and faults."

"I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores."

"The wise man reveals more than words spoken."

"Developing the man within comes through self- awareness and self-education."

"Moments of reflection occur with calm deliberation and careful thought. Imagine the thoughts which would come to you if you would simply allow them. By giving intentional consideration to a situation, you will gain clarity which you may not have achieved otherwise."

"The most powerful word in time management is NO."

"Listen to 'The Voice', not the choice."

"We need to go through all the processes in order to understand what our calling is."
Explore more quotes by Hilary Mantel

"Those sectaries in Europe who are always expecting the end of the world, but who hope that, after the earth has been consumed by fire, they will be seated in glory: grilled a little, crisp at the edges and blackened in parts, but still, thanks be to God, alive for eternity, and seated at his right hand."

"I aim to make the fiction flexible so that it bends itself around the facts as we have them. Otherwise I don't see the point. Nobody seems to understand that. Nobody seems to share my approach to historical fiction. I suppose if I have a maxim, it is that there isn't any necessary conflict between good history and good drama."

"Law of Suspects. Suspects are those: who have in any way aided tyranny (royal tyranny, Brissotin tyranny...); who cannot show that they have performed their civic duties; who do not starve, and yet have no visible means of support; who have been refused certificates of citizenship by their Sections; who have been removed from public office by the Convention or its representatives; who belong to an aristocratic family, and have not given proof of constant and extraordinary revolutionary fervor; or who have emigrated."

"One summer at the fag end of the nineties, I had to go out of London to talk to a literary society, of the sort that must have been old-fashioned when the previous century closed. When the day came, I wondered why I'd agreed to it; but yes is easier than no, and of course when you make a promise you think the time will never arrive: that there will be a nuclear holocaust, or something else diverting."

"It is not easy to talk about a condition once dismissed as 'the career women's disease'. But women will continue to suffer until we realise the cost of ignoring it."

"Give me a book, she said. "A book of sermons, anything."What do you want a book for?"I want words. I've got to have more words. I was kept stupid on purpose."

"This visit has compacted the court's quarrels and intrigues, trapped them in the small space within the town's walls. The travelers have become as intimate with each other as cards in a pack: contiguous, but their paper eyes blind."

"Have you ever observed that when a man gets a son he takes all the credit, and when he gets a daughter he blames his wife? And if they do not breed at all, we say it is because her womb is barren. We do not say it is because his seed is bad."

"Some readers read a book as if it were an instruction manual, expecting to understand everything first time, but of course when you write, you put into every sentence an overflow of meaning, and you create in every sentence as many resonances and double meanings and ambiguities as you can possibly pack in there, so that people can read it again and get something new each time."

"As Danton sees it, the most bizarre aspect of Camille's character is his desire to scribble over every blank surface; he sees a guileless piece of paper, virgin and harmless, and persecutes it till it is black with words, and then besmirches its sister, and so on, through the quire."
bottom of page