Gerald Brenan Quotes

Edward FitzGerald "Gerald" Brenan, CBE (7 April 1894 – 19 January 1987)^[2]) was a British writer and Hispanist who spent much of his life in Spain.
He is best known for The Spanish Labyrinth, a historical work on the background to the Spanish Civil War, and for South from Granada: Seven Years in an Andalusian Village. He was awarded a CBE^[3] in the Diplomatic Service and Overseas List in 1982.

The cliche is dead poetry.
Gerald Brenan

Everyone is a bore to someone. That is unimportant. The thing to avoid is being a bore to oneself.
Gerald Brenan

As I get older I seem to believe less and less and yet to believe what I do believe more and more.
Gerald Brenan

If you wish to be brothers, let the arms fall from your hands. One cannot love while holding offensive arms.
Gerald Brenan

You generally hear that what a man doesn't know doesn't hurt him, but in business what a man doesn't know does hurt.
Gerald Brenan

A healthy old fellow, who is not a fool, is the happiest creature living.
Gerald Brenan

We are closer to the ants than to the butterflies. Very few people can endure much leisure.
Gerald Brenan

Middle age snuffs out more talent than even wars or sudden death does.
Gerald Brenan

Wisdom is keeping a sense of fallibility of all our views and opinions.
Gerald Brenan

In a happy marriage it is the wife who provides the climate, the husband the landscape.
Gerald Brenan

We confess our bad qualities to others out of fear of appearing naive or ridiculous by not being aware of them.
Gerald Brenan

Those who have some means think that the most important thing in the world is love. The poor know that it is money.
Gerald Brenan

Intellectuals are people who believe that ideas are of more importance than values. That is to say, their own ideas and other people's values.
Gerald Brenan

Miller is not really a writer but a non-stop talker to whom someone has given a typewriter.
Gerald Brenan