“Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.”

— Gertrude Stein, Everybody's Autobiography (1937), Ch.1

About Gertrude Stein

1874 – 1946

American writer and art collector who lived in Paris, author of 'The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas' and 'Paris France'.

“The family is always the family but during vacations it is an extended family and that is exhausting.”

“One does not get better but different and older and that is always a pleasure.”

“It is always a mistake to be plain-spoken.”

“If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces.”

“Always take the short cut; and that is the rational one. Therefore say and do everything according to soundest reason.”

“The young have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations.”

“Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.”

“I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research.”

“There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them.”