70+ Best Gertrude Stein Quotes From The American Novelist And Playwrite

Gertrude Stein was a famous American novelist.

She was a very important member of the modernist movement. Gertrude Stein was also heavily involved in the Parisian art world.

A lot of her writings is based on feminism, the world war and other social matters. She hosted a Paris Salon which served as a meeting place among other eminent writers like F.Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis and others.

Few of her best works include 'Everybody's Autobiography', 'Wars I Have Seen', 'The Geographical History Of America' and others. Do go through this article and we are sure you will be entertained by these cool quotes.

If you find our content interesting then do check out [T.S Eliot quotes] and John Steinbeck quotes]

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Best Quotes By Gertrude Stein

Listed below are some of the best Gertrude Stein quotes.

1."Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense."

- Gertrude Stein.

2. "The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it."

- Gertrude Stein, 'How Writing Is Written: Previously Uncollected Writings'.

3. "A beauty is not suddenly in a circle. It comes with rapture. A great deal of beauty is rapture. A circle is a necessity. Otherwise you would see no one. We each have our circle."

- Gertrude Stein, 'A Circular Play'.

4. "It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much, doing nothing, really doing nothing."

- Gertrude Stein.

5. "Growing has no connection with audience.

Audience has no connection with identity."

- Gertrude Stein, 'The Geographical History Of America'.

6. "I like a thing simple but it must be simple through complication."

- Gertrude Stein, 'A Primer For The Gradual Understanding Of Gertrude Stein'.

7. "I do want to get rich but I never want to do what there is to get rich."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Everybody's Autobiography'.

8. "We are always the same age inside."

- Gertrude Stein.

9. "Anything one does every day is important and imposing and anywhere one lives is interesting and beautiful."

- Gertrude Stein.

10. "There ain't no answer.

There ain't gonna be any answer.

There never has been an answer.

There's your answer."

- Gertrude Stein.

11. "Writers only think they are interested in politics, they are not really, it gives them a chance to talk and writers like to talk but really no real writer is really interested in politics."

- Gertrude Stein, 'The Situation In American Writing'.

12. "When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone. After all, human beings are like that."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Delphi Complete Works Of Gertrude'.

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

- Gertrude Stein.

14. "Anything scares me, anything scares anyone but really after all considering how dangerous everything is nothing is really very frightening."

- Gertrude Stein.

15. "There is no such thing as repetition. Only insistance."

- Gertrude Stein.

16. "It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realise the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Wars I Have Seen'.

17. "America is my country, and Paris is my home town."

- Gertrude Stein.

18. "It is very natural that every one who makes anything inside themselves that is makes it entirely out of what is in them does naturally have to have two civilizations. They have to have the civilization that makes them and the civilization that has nothing to do with them."

- Gertrude Stein, 'What Are Masterpieces'.

19. "The thing that is most interesting about government servants is that they believe what they are supposed to believe, they really do believe what they are supposed to believe."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Wars I Have Seen'.

20. "From the very nature of progress, all ages must be transitional. If they were not, the world would be at a stand-still and death would speedily ensue. It is one of the tamest of platitudes but it is always introduced by a flourish of trumpets."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Form And Intelligibility'.

Famous Gertrude Stein Quotes

Here you will find famous quotes of Gertrude Stein along with Gertrude Stein quotes about life.

21. "Now they can do the radio in so many languages that nobody any longer dreams of a single language, and there should not any longer be dreams of conquest because the globe is all one, anybody can hear everything and everybody can hear the same thing, so what is the use of conquering."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Wars I Have Seen'.

22. "If the communication is perfect, the words have life, and that is all there is to good writing, putting down on the paper words which dance and weep and make love and fight and kiss and perform miracles."

- Gertrude Stein,

23. "You look ridiculous if you dance

You look ridiculous if you don't dance

So you might as well

dance."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Three Lives'.

24. "When I go around and speak on campuses, I still don't get young men standing up and saying, How can I combine career and family?"

- Gertrude Stein.

25. "Too few is as many as too many."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Everybody's Autobiography'.

26. "It is nice that nobody writes as they talk and that the printed language is different from the spoken otherwise you could not lose yourself in books and of course you do you completely do."

- Gertrude Stein.

27. "I had a family. They can be a nuisance in identity but there is no doubt no shadow of doubt that that identity the family identity we can do without."

- Gertrude Stein, 'The Geographical History Of America'.

28. "Grammar little by little is not a thing. Which may gain.

There. Make twenty-five be a woman. The meaning of that does not interest me. It is a complexion that interests that makes ridiculous because that does not make it something else. But it does make them which is again me."

- Gertrude Stein, 'How To Write'.

29. "I am writing for myself and strangers. This is the only way that I can do it."

- Gertrude Stein.

30. "Counting is the religion of this generation it is its hope and its salvation."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Everybody's Autobiography'.

31. "There are the two sides to a Frenchman, logic and fashion and that is the reason why French people are exciting and peaceful. Logic and fashion."

- Gertrude Stein.

32. "It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much, doing nothing, really doing nothing."

- Gertrude Stein.

33. "It is funny the two things most men are proudest of is the thing that any man can do and doing does in the same way, that is being drunk and being the father of their son."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Everybody's Autobiography'.

34. "Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Form and Intelligibility'.

35. "In the United States, there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. This is what makes America what it is."

- Gertrude Stein, 'The Geographical History Of America'.

Inspirational Quotes By Gertrude Stein

In this category you will find a cool Gertrude Stein quote and some inspirational Gertrude Stein quotes.

36. "You are so afraid of losing your moral sense that you are not willing to take it through anything more dangerous than a mud-puddle."

- Gertrude Stein.

37. "You have to know what you want. And if it seems to take you off the track, don't hold back, because perhaps that is instinctively where you want to be. "

- Gertrude Stein.

38. "There are two kinds of men and women, those who have in them resisting as their way of winning those who have in them attacking as their way of winning."

- Gertrude Stein.

39. "She always says she dislikes the abnormal...She says the normal is so much more simply complicated and interesting."

- Gertrude Stein.

40. "You'll be old and you never lived, and you kind of feel silly to lie down and die and to never have lived, to have been a job chaser and never have lived."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Brewsie And Willie'.

41. "For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts."

- Gertrude Stein.

42. "You are extraordinary within your limits, but your limits are extraordinary!"

- Gertrude Stein, 'Everybody's Autobiography'.

44. "Whoever said money can't buy happiness didn't know where to shop."

- Gertrude Stein.

Gertrude Stein Quotes On Art And Writing

In this category you will find all the Gertrude Stein quotes on art and writing.

45. "A creator is so completely contemporary that he has the appearance of being ahead of his generation."

- Gertrude Stein.

46. "There is no pulse so sure of the state of a nation as its characteristic art product which has nothing to do with its material life."

- Gertrude Stein.

47. "There is no pleasure so sweet as the pleasure of spending money but the pleasure of writing is longer. There is no denying that."

- Gertrude Stein, 'How Writing Is Written'.

48. "Writer or painter god-parents are notoriously unreliable. That is, there is certain before long to be a cooling of friendship."

- Gertrude Stein, 'The Autobiography Of Alice B. Toklas'.

49. "A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears."

- Gertrude Stein.

50. "The first hope of a painter who feels hopeful about painting is the hope that the painting will move, that it will live outside its frame."

- Gertrude Stein.

51. "The artist works by locating the world in himself."

- Gertrude Stein.

52. "but to see things in new ways, that is difficult and that is why genius is so rare."

- Gertrude Stein.

54. "The creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic."

- Gertrude Stein.

55. "The earth is the earth as a peasant sees it, the world is the world as a duchess sees it, and anyway a duchess would be nothing if the earth was not there as the peasant sees it."

- Gertrude Stein.

56. "I murmured to Picasso that I liked his portrait of Gertrude Stein. Yes, he said, everybody said that she does not look like it, but that does not make any difference, she will, he said."

- Gertrude Stein.

57. "One of the pleasant things those of us who write or paint do is to have the daily miracle. It does come."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Paris France'.

58. "Asparagus in a lean in a lean is to hot. This makes it art and it is wet weather wet weather wet."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Tender Buttons: The Corrected Centennial Edition'

Gertrude Stein Poetry Quotes

Listed below are are some quotes from famous Gertrude Stein poems.

59. "So to beseech you as full as for it.

Exactly or as kings.

Shutters shut and open so do queens."

- Gertrude Stein, 'If I Told Him, A Completed Portrait of Picasso'.

60. "Little drawers of center.

Neighbor of dot light.  

Shorter place to make a boom set.  

Marches to be bright."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Yet Dish'.

61. "Incoming  

Favorable and be fought.

Adds to it.

In half.

Take the place of take the place of take the place of taking  

place."

- Gertrude Stein, 'New'.

62. "Drink pups lease a sash hold, see it shine and a bobolink has pins. It shows a nail.

What is a nail. A nail is unison.

Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Susie Asado'.

63. "May I be very well and happy

May I be whichever they can thrive

Or just may they not."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Stanzas In Meditation'.

64. "Negligible old star.  

Pour even.

It was a sad per cent."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Yet Dish'.

65. "This is a please this is a please there are the saids to jelly. These are the wets these say the sets to leave a crown to Incy.

Incy is short for incubus."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Susie Asado'.

'Midnight In Paris' Movie Quotes

'Midnight In Paris' is a popular Hollywood movie directed by Woody Allen. In the movie the protagonist uses time travel and visit is writers and critics from the past including Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Salvador Dali and others. Here are some Gertrude Stein quotes from 'Midnight In Paris'.

66. "We all fear death and question our place in the universe."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Midnight In Paris'.

67. "Adriana: I love it. I'm already - hooked?

Hooked.

Gertrude Stein: I'll start it tonight. But first we have something to talk about."

- 'Midnight In Paris'.

68. "The artist's job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Midnight In Paris'.

69. "you make a petit bourgeoise judgment and turn her into an object of pleasure."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Midnight In Paris'.

70. "Hemingway did have one plot suggestion - he doesn't quite believe that the protagonist doesn't see that his fiancée is having an affair right before his eyes."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Midnight In Paris'.

71. "You have a clear and lovely voice. Don't be such a defeatist."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Midnight In Paris'.

72. "Gertrude Stein: [turning to Gil] And what about this book of yours I've been hearing about?

[to Hemingway] Have you read it?

Hemingway : No, this I leave to you. You've always been the best judge of my work."

- 'Midnight In Paris'.

73. "They do not think not only only

But always with prefer

And therefore I like what is mine."

- Gertrude Stein, 'Stanzas In Meditation'.

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for Gertrude Stein quotes then why not take a look at Emily Dickenson quotes or Keats quotes

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