“How to save the old that's worth saving, whether in landscape, houses, manners, institutions, or human types, is one of our greatest problems, and the one that we bother least about.”

— John Galsworthy, One More River (1933), Ch. 39

About John Galsworthy

1867 – 1933

English novelist and Nobel laureate in Literature (1932).

“Art is the great and universal refreshment.”

“The world's a fine place for those who go out to take it; there's lots of unknown stuff in it yet.”

“They did not stop to love each other in this life; they were so sure they had all eternity to do it in.”

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

“It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?”

“In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw us aside.”

“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.”

“That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within.”

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