21+ Patrick White Quotes On Education, Culture And Prayer

Patrick White was an Australian author who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973. He is best known for his novels Voss, The Tree of Man, and Riders in the Chariot. His works are often characterized by their exploration of the Australian landscape and its people, as well as their examination of complex psychological and spiritual themes. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Patrick White on education, leadership, life.

Top 10 Patrick White Quotes

1. I forget what I was taught. I only remember what I have learnt.
2. If I have not lost my mind I can sometimes hear it preparing to defect
3. I developed the habit of writing novels behind a closed door, or at my uncle's, on the dining table.
4. In fact I enjoyed every minute of my life at King's, especially the discovery of French and German literature.
5. Even if a university should turn out to be another version of a school, I had decided I could lose myself afterwards as an anonymous particle of the London I already loved.
6. To understand the stars would spoil their appearance.
7. Probably induced by the asthma, I started reading and writing early on, my literary efforts from the age of about nine running chiefly to poetry and plays.
8. Then about 1951 I began writing again, painfully, a novel I called in the beginning A Life Sentence on Earth, but which developed into The Tree of Man.
9. Because he had nothing to hide, he did perhaps appear to have forfeited a little of his strength. But that is the irony of honesty.
10. My father and mother were second cousins, though they did not meet till shortly before their marriage.

Patrick White Famous Quotes And Sayings

When I was rising eighteen I persuaded my parents to let me return to Australia and at least see whether I could adapt myself to life on the land before going up to Cambridge. — Patrick White

She had begun to read in the beginning as a protection from the frightening and unpleasant things. She continued because, apart from the story, literature brought with it a kind of gentility for which she craved. — Patrick White

In spite of holidays when I was free to visit London theatres and explore the countryside, I spent four very miserable years as a colonial at an English school. — Patrick White

I continued writing the bad plays which fortunately nobody would produce, just as no one did me the unkindness of publishing my early novels. — Patrick White

I left for New York expecting to repeat my success, only to be turned down by almost every publisher in that city, till the Viking Press, my American publishers of a lifetime, thought of taking me on. — Patrick White

She would have liked to sit upon a rock and listen to words, not of any man, but detached, mysterious, poetic words that she alone would interpret through some sense inherited from sleep. — Patrick White

If truth is not acceptable, it becomes the imagination of others. — Patrick White

I think it is impossible to explain faith. It is like trying to explain air, which one cannot do by dividing it into its component parts and labeling them scientifically. It must be breathed to be understood. — Patrick White

I expect we are all jealous of the women in their past, but how much less exciting if the women had not kept the bed warm. — Patrick White

Life is full of alternatives but no choice. — Patrick White

As a result of the asthma I was sent to school in the country, and only visited Sydney for brief, violently asthmatic sojourns on my way to a house we owned in the Blue Mountains. — Patrick White

Life Lessons by Patrick White

1. Patrick White's work emphasizes the importance of self-expression and individualism. He encourages readers to find their own unique voice and to live life according to their own values and beliefs.
2. His stories often focus on the struggles of the individual against society, and the power of the human spirit to overcome adversity.
3. His work also highlights the importance of understanding and appreciating the diversity of human experience, and the need to accept and embrace difference.