“From the very nature of progress, all ages must be transitional.”

— Gertrude Stein, "Form and Intelligibility," from The Radcliffe Manuscripts (1949); written in 1894 as an undergraduate at Radcliffe College

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.”

“A whole is that which has beginning, middle, and end.”

“Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.”

“All becoming and growing—all that guarantees a future—involves pain.”

“Great is the art of beginning, but greater the art is of ending.”

“All progress means war with Society.”

“All great truths begin as blasphemies.”