26+ John Cowper Powys Quotes On Friendship, Peace And War

John Cowper Powys was a British novelist, poet, and philosopher. He is best known for his novels Wolf Solent, A Glastonbury Romance, and Weymouth Sands. His writings were heavily influenced by his religious beliefs, which included pantheism, animism, and mysticism. Following is our collection on famous quotes by John Cowper Powys on love, friendship, peace.

Top 10 John Cowper Powys Quotes

1. One needs no strange spiritual faith to worship the earth.
2. A bookshop is powder-magazine, a dynamite-shed, a drugstore of poisons, a bar of intoxicants, a den of opiates, an island of sirens.
3. Love is always in the mood of believing in miracles.
4. To a real child anything will serve as a toy.
5. The strongest of all psychic forces in the world is unsatisfied desire.
6. Who has not watched a mother stroke her child's cheek or kiss her child in a certain way and felt a nervous shudder at the possessive outrage done to a free solitary human soul?
7. "The meaning of culture" is nothing less than the conduct of life itself, fortified, thickened, made more crafty and subtle, by contact with books and with art.
8. The permanent mental attitude which the sensitive intelligence derives from philosophy is an attitude that combines extreme reverence with limitless skepticism.
9. Man is the animal who weeps and laughs - and writes. If the first Prometheus brought fire from heaven in a fennel-stalk, the last will take it back - in a book.
10. Let none count themselves wise who have not with the nerves of their imagination felt the pain of the vivisected.

John Cowper Powys Short Quotes

• Words cannot be remote from reality when they create reality.
• The more money you give to people the better; and the less advice.
• The love that interferes and knows not how to leave alone is a love alien to Nature's ways.
• Ambition is the grand enemy of all peace.

John Cowper Powys Famous Quotes And Sayings

If by the time we're sixty we haven't learned what a knot of paradox and contradiction life is, and how exquisitely the good and the bad are mingled in every action we take, and what a compromising hostess Our Lady of Truth is, we haven't grown old to much purpose. — John Cowper Powys

Every day that we allow ourselves to take things for granted, every day that we allow some little physical infirmity or worldly worry to come between us and our obstinate, indignant, defiant exultation, we are weakening our genius for life. — John Cowper Powys

The mistake we make is to turn upon our past with angry wholesale negation. … The way of wisdom is to treat it airily, lightly, wantonly, and in a spirit of poetry; and above all to use its symbols, which are its spiritual essence, giving them a new connotation, a fresh meaning. — John Cowper Powys

Our rulers at the present day, with their machines and their preachers, are all occupied in putting into our heads the preposterous notion that activity rather than contemplation is the object of life. — John Cowper Powys

The influence of friendship upon culture differs from that of love, in that it assumes the basic idiosyncrasies of personal taste to be unalterable. Love, in spite of all rational knowledge to the contrary, is always in the mood of believing in miracles. — John Cowper Powys

No refining of one's taste in matters of art or literature, no sharpening of one's powers of insight in matters of science or psychology, can ever take the place of one's sensitiveness to the life of the earth. This is the beginning and the end of a person's true education. — John Cowper Powys

This swallowing up of life in nothingness, this obliteration of life by nothingness is what the emotion of malice ultimately desires. The eternal conflict between love and malice is the eternal contest between life and death. And this contest is what the complex vision reveals, as it moves from darkness to darkness. — John Cowper Powys

It is that cricket field that, in all the sharp and bitter moments of life as they come to me now, gives me a sense of wholesome proportion: 'At least I am not playing cricket! — John Cowper Powys

It is strange how few people make more than a casual cult of enjoying Nature. And yet the earth is actually and literally the mother of us all. One needs no strange spiritual faith to worship the earth. — John Cowper Powys

Having once aroused in our mind enough faith in our own will-power to create a universe of contemplation and forget everything else, there are few limitations to the happiness we may enjoy. — John Cowper Powys

Not the wretchedest man or woman but has a deep secretive mythology with which to wrestle with the material world and to overcome it and pass beyond it. Not the wretchedest human being but has his share in the creative energy that builds the world. We are all creators. We all create a mythological world of our own out of certain shapeless materials. — John Cowper Powys

Most of the pathetic scenes in almost everybody's life are scenes unnoted by anyone and totally disregarded by the person in question. — John Cowper Powys

Life Lessons by John Cowper Powys

1. John Cowper Powys teaches us to appreciate the beauty of nature and to live in harmony with it.
2. He also emphasizes the importance of understanding our place in the world, and the need to accept our limitations and to strive for a sense of inner peace.
3. His works also remind us to be mindful of our relationships with others, and to be compassionate and understanding in our interactions.