110+ Katherine Mansfield Quotes On Education, Friendship And Identity

Katherine Mansfield was a New Zealand modernist writer of short fiction, who wrote in the early 20th century. She is widely considered to be one of the most important short story writers of her time. She is best known for her stories depicting the inner lives of ordinary people, often women, and their psychological struggles with the restraints of society. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Katherine Mansfield on education, love, friendship.

Top 10 Katherine Mansfield Quotes

1. I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.
2. If only one could tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools.
3. Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different.
4. Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy, you can't build on it it's only good for wallowing in.
5. How hard it is to escape from places. However carefully one goes they hold you — you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences — like rags and shreds of your very life.
6. I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.
7. Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.
8. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.
9. The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.
10. Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back.

Katherine Mansfield Short Quotes

• The truth is friendship is every bit as sacred and eternal as marriage.
• You are a Queen. Let mine be the joy of giving you your kingdom.
• I have such a horror of telegrams that ask me how I am!! I always want to reply dead.
• I am a recluse at present & do nothing but write & read & read & write
• England is merely an island of beef swimming in a warm gulf stream of gravy.
• Regret is an appalling waste of time.
• I want, by understanding myself, to understand others.
• In the woods where snow is thick, bars of sunlight lay like pale fire.
• That's all life is - something childish and very natural. Isn't it?
• Better to write twaddle, anything, than nothing at all.

Katherine Mansfield Quotes About Love

I adore Life. What do all the fools matter and all the stupidity. They do matter but somehow for me they cannot touch the body of Life. Life is marvellous. I want to be deeply rooted in it - to live - to expand - to breathe in it - to rejoice - to share it. To give and to be asked for Love. — Katherine Mansfield

The mind I love must have wild places. — Katherine Mansfield

Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must become Love. That is the mystery. — Katherine Mansfield

My love for you tonight is so deep and tender that it seems to be outside myself as well. — Katherine Mansfield

I love the rain. I want the feeling of it on my face. — Katherine Mansfield

... I'd always rather be with people who loved me too little rather than with people who loved me too much. — Katherine Mansfield

You might drop your heart into me and you'd never hear it touch bottom. — Katherine Mansfield

What I feel for you can’t be conveyed in phrasal combinations; It either screams out loud or stays painfully silent but I promise — it beats words. It beats worlds. I promise — Katherine Mansfield

The whole world shall be ours because of our love. — Katherine Mansfield

Why it should be such an effort to write to the people one loves I can't imagine. It's none at all to write to those who don't really count. — Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield Quotes About Life

September is different from all other months. It is more magical. I feel the strange chemical change in the earth which produces mushrooms is the cause, too, of the extra 'life' in the air - a resilience, a sparkle. — Katherine Mansfield

It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves. — Katherine Mansfield

There are always these moments in life when the limits of suffering are reached and we become heroes and heroines. — Katherine Mansfield

Make it a rule in life never to regret and never look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it is good only for wallowing in. — Katherine Mansfield

When we begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. — Katherine Mansfield

In fact, isn't it a joy - there is hardly a greater one - to find a new book, a living book, and to know that it will remain with you while life lasts? — Katherine Mansfield

I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.... This all sounds very strenuous and serious. But now that I have wrestled with it, it's no longer so. I feel happy- deep down. All is well. — Katherine Mansfield

Do the hardest thing on earth for you. ACT YOURSELF. — Katherine Mansfield

By health I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with... the earth and the wonders thereof - the sea - the sun. — Katherine Mansfield

Life never becomes a habit to me. It's always a marvel. — Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield Quotes About Change

Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. — Katherine Mansfield

Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different. Life would undergo a change of appearance because we ourselves had undergone a change of attitude. — Katherine Mansfield

Oh, how quickly things changed! Why didn't happiness last for ever? For ever wasn't a bit too long. — Katherine Mansfield

There are in life as many aspects as attitudes towards it, and aspects change with attitudes. — Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield Quotes About Lives

The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books. — Katherine Mansfield

Would you not like to try all sorts of lives -- one is so very small -- but that is the satisfaction of writing -- one can impersonate so many people. — Katherine Mansfield

Would you not like to try all sorts of lives - one is so very small - but that is the satisfaction of writing - one can impersonate so many people. — Katherine Mansfield

Warm, eager, living life-to be rooted in life-to learn, to desire, to know, to feel, to think, to act. This is what I want. And nothing less. That is what I must try for. — Katherine Mansfield

I don't believe other people are ever as foolishly excited as I am while I'm working. How could they be? Writers would have to live in trees. — Katherine Mansfield

Whatever happens I have had these blissful, perfect moments and they are worth living for. — Katherine Mansfield

If you wish to live, you must first attend your own funeral. — Katherine Mansfield

I feel I must live alone, alone, alone - with artists only to touch the door. Every artist cuts off his ear and nails it on the outside of the door for the others to shout into. — Katherine Mansfield

What is it with me? Am I absolutely nobody, but merely inordinately vain? I do not know…. But I am most fearfully unhappy. That is all. I am so unhappy that I wish I was dead—yet I should be mad to die when I have not yet lived at all. — Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield Quotes About Face

Risk! Risk Anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those other voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth. — Katherine Mansfield

Now's the time when children's noses All become as red as roses And the colour of their faces Makes me think of orchard places Where the juicy apples grow, And tomatoes in a row. — Katherine Mansfield

What do you want most to do? That's what I have to keep asking myself, in the face of difficulties. — Katherine Mansfield

Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others ... Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth. (Journal entry, 14 October 1922) — Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield Famous Quotes And Sayings

Oh, impossible. Fancy cream puffs so soon after breakfast. The very idea made one shudder. All the same, two minutes later Jose and Laura were licking their fingers with that absorbed inward look that only comes from whipped cream. — Katherine Mansfield

What happiness it is to listen to rain at night; joyful relief, ease; a lapping-round and hushing and brooding tenderness, all are mingled together in the sound of the fast-falling rain. God, looking down upon the rainy earth, sees how faint are these lights shining in little windows, - how easily put out. — Katherine Mansfield

I am poor - obscure - just eighteen years of age - with a rapacious appetite for everything and principles as light as my purse. — Katherine Mansfield

It's rather nice to think of oneself as a sailor bending over the map of one's mind and deciding where to go and how to go. The great thing to remember is we can do whatever we wish to do provided our wish is strong enough. — Katherine Mansfield

The truth is that every true admirer of the novels cherishes the happy thought that he alone - reading between the lines - has bcome the secret friend of their author. — Katherine Mansfield

When I say "I fear" - don't let it disturb you, dearest heart. We all fear when we are in waiting-rooms. Yet we must pass beyond them, and if the other can keep calm, it is all the help we can give each other. — Katherine Mansfield

Bless you, my darling, and remember you are always in the heart - oh tucked so close there is no chance of escape - of your sister. — Katherine Mansfield

The ostrich burying its head in the sand does at any rate wish to convey the impression that its head is the most important part of it. — Katherine Mansfield

How idiotic civilization is! Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle? — Katherine Mansfield

What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly, by a feeling of bliss - absolute bliss - as though you'd suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle into every finger and toe? — Katherine Mansfield

It's a terrible thing to be alone -- yes it is -- it is -- but don't lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath --as terrible as you like --but a mask. — Katherine Mansfield

Whenever I prepare for a journey I prepare as though for death. Should I never return, all is in order. — Katherine Mansfield

When we can begin to take our failures seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves. — Katherine Mansfield

Regret is an appalling waste of energy, and no one who intends to be a writer can afford to indulge in it. — Katherine Mansfield

All the wild sweetness of the flower Tangled against the wall. It was that magic, silent hour.... The branches grew so tall They twined themselves into a bower. The sun shown ... and the fall Of yellow blossom on the grass! You feel that golden rain? Both of you could not hold, alas, (both of you tried, in vain) A memory, stranger. So I pass.... It will not come again. — Katherine Mansfield

Winter is a terrible time for thin people - terrible! Why should it hound them down, fasten on them, worry them so? Why not, for a change, take a nip, take a snap at the fat ones who wouldn't notice? But no! It is sleek, warm, cat-like summer that makes the fat one's life a misery. Winter is all for bones. — Katherine Mansfield

I think of you often. Especially in the evenings, when I am on the balcony and it’s too dark to write or to do anything but wait for the stars. A time I love. One feels half disembodied, sitting like a shadow at the door of one’s being while the dark tide rises. Then comes the moon, marvellously serene, and small stars, very merry for some reason of their own. It is so easy to forget, in a worldly life, to attend to these miracles. — Katherine Mansfield

But one day we shall be rich, and the next poor. One day we shall dine in a palace and the next we'll sit in a forest and toast mushrooms on a hatpin. — Katherine Mansfield

I am going to enjoy life in Paris I know. It is so human and there is something noble in the city... It is a real city, old and fine and life plays in it for everybody to see. — Katherine Mansfield

In the shortest sea voyage there is no sense of time. You have been down in the cabin for hours or days or years. Nobody knows or cares. You know all the people to the point of indifference. You do not believe in dry land any more - you are caught in the pendulum itself, and left there, idly swinging. — Katherine Mansfield

conversation is like a dear little baby that is brought in to be handed round. You must rock it, nurse it, keep it on the move if you want it to keep smiling. — Katherine Mansfield

I'm treating you as a friend asking you to share my present minuses in the hope that I can ask you to share my future pluses — Katherine Mansfield

To be alive and to be a ‘writer’ is enough. — Katherine Mansfield

You have never been curious about me; you never wanted to explore my soul. — Katherine Mansfield

Yes, my mother's death is a terrible sorrow to me. I feel - do you know what I mean - the silence of it so. She was more alive than anyone I have ever known. — Katherine Mansfield

Children are unaccountable little creatures. — Katherine Mansfield

I must say, I hate money. But it's the lack of it I hate most. — Katherine Mansfield

That is the fearful part of having been near death. One knows how easy it is to die. The barriers that are up for everybody else are down for you, and you've only to slip through. — Katherine Mansfield

Tidied all my papers. Tore up and ruthlessly destroyed much. This is always a great satisfaction. — Katherine Mansfield

Isn't life,' she stammered, 'isn't life--' But what life was she couldn't explain. No matter. He quite understood. 'Isn't it, darling?' said Laurie. — Katherine Mansfield

Who is to decide between 'Let it be' and 'Force it'? — Katherine Mansfield

Do you remember your childhood? I am always coming across these marvelous accounts by writers who declare that they remember 'everything.' I certainly don't. The dark stretches, the blanks, are much bigger than the bright glimpses. I seem to have spent most of my time like a plant in a cupboard. — Katherine Mansfield

I really only have Perfect Fun with myself. Other people won't stop and look at the things I want to look at or, if they do, they stop to please me or to humor me or to keep the peace. — Katherine Mansfield

If only one could tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools. With mushrooms it is so simple - you salt them well, put them aside and have patience. But with love, you have no sooner lighted on anything that bears even the remotest resemblance to it than you are perfectly certain it is not only a genuine specimen, but perhaps the only genuine mushroom ungathered. — Katherine Mansfield

There is no feeling to be compared with the feeling of having written and finished a story. — Katherine Mansfield

Courage is like a disobedient dog, once it starts running away it flies all the faster for your attempts to recall it. — Katherine Mansfield

Can one do nothing for the dead? And for a long time the answer had been - Nothing! — Katherine Mansfield

To long for everything: sorrow; to accept everything: joy. — Katherine Mansfield

The mind I love must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody's fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with flowers planted by the mind. — Katherine Mansfield

I love this place; I love mountains and big skies and forests. And the weather is still supremely beautiful even though the lower peaks are powdered with fresh snow. But Heavens! What sun. It never has an ending. I am basking at this minute - half past four - too hot without a hat, & the sky is that transparent blue only to be seen in autumn - the forest trees steeped in light. — Katherine Mansfield

It is strange that there are times when I feel the stars are not at all solemn: they are secretly gay. — Katherine Mansfield

But what Kezia liked more than anything, what she liked frightfully, was the lamp. It stood in the middle of the dining-room table, an exquisite little amber lamp with a white globe. It was filled all ready for lighting, though, of course, you couldn't light it. But there was something inside that looked like oil and moved when you shook it. The father and mother dolls, who sprawled very stiff as though they had fainted in the drawing-room, and their two little children asleep upstairs, were really too big for the doll's house. They didn't look as though they belonged. But the lamp was perfect. It seemed to smile at Kezia, to say, 'I live here.' The lamp was real. — Katherine Mansfield

Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all. — Katherine Mansfield

if one really does try to find out why it is that people don't leave each other, one discovers a mystery. It is because they can't; they are bound. And nobody on earth knows what are the bonds that bind them except those two. — Katherine Mansfield

To work -- to work! It is such infinite delight to know that we still have the best things to do. — Katherine Mansfield

Every time one leaves anywhere, something precious, which ought not to be killed, is left to die. — Katherine Mansfield

roses are the only flowers at garden-parties; the only flowers that everybody is certain of knowing. — Katherine Mansfield

Why! Why! Why is the middle-class so stodgy - so utterly without a sense of humor? — Katherine Mansfield

The late evening is the time of times. Then with that unearthly beauty before one it is not hard to realise how far one has to go. To write something that will be worthy of that rising moon, that pale light. — Katherine Mansfield

I love the evening star. Does that sound foolish? I used to go into the backyard, after sunset, and wait for it until it shone above the dark gum tree. I used to whisper 'There you are, my darling.' And just in that first moment it seemed to be shining for me alone. It seemed to understand this ... something which is like longing, and yet it is not longing. Or regret - it is more like regret. — Katherine Mansfield

I love the night. I love to feel the tide of darkness rising, slowly and slowly washing, turning over and over, lifting, floating, all that lies strewn upon the dark beach, all that lies hid in rocky hollows. — Katherine Mansfield

It's a terrible thing to be alone - yes it is - it is - but don't lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath - as terrible as you like - but a mask. — Katherine Mansfield

Letters are the real curse of my existence. I hate to write them: I have to. If I don't, there they are - the great guilty gates barring my way. — Katherine Mansfield

We can do whatever we wish to do provided our wish is strong enough. But the tremendous effort needed- one doesn't always want to make it-does one? ... But what else can be done? What's the alternative? What do you want most to do? That's what I have to keep asking myself, in the face of difficulties. — Katherine Mansfield

As in the physical world, so in the spiritual world, pain does not last forever. — Katherine Mansfield

Life Lessons by Katherine Mansfield

1. Katherine Mansfield teaches us to appreciate the beauty of life and to live it to the fullest. She encourages us to be mindful of our actions and to strive for self-improvement. Lastly, she reminds us to be kind and generous to those around us, as it is the only way to truly find inner peace.