Quotes by Gertrude Stein

About Gertrude Stein:

Gertrude Stein was an American writer of novels, poetry and plays. Born in West Allegheny (Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, making France her home for the remainder of her life. A literary innovator and pioneer of Modernist literature, Stein’s work broke with the narrative, linear, and temporal conventions of the 19th-century. She was also known as a collector of Modernist art.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

nothing changes from one generation to another except the things seen and the things seen make that generation, that is to say nothing changes in people from one generation to another except the way of seeing and being seen.

Gertrude Stein

It is an extraordinary thing but it is true, wars are only a means of publicising the things already accomplished.

Gertrude Stein

After all everybody, that is, everybody who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. That is why writers have to have two countries, the one where they belong and the one in which they live really. ...

Gertrude Stein

You look ridiculous if you dance You look ridiculous if you don't dance So you might as well dance.

Gertrude Stein

A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself.

Gertrude Stein

It is extraordinary that when you are acquainted with a whole family you can forget about them.

Gertrude Stein

Every adolescent has that dream every century has that dream every revolutionary has that dream, to destroy the family.

Gertrude Stein

But the problem is that 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

It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business.

Gertrude Stein

Money is always there but the pockets change; it is not in the same pockets after a change, and that is all there is to say about money.

Gertrude Stein

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

Gertrude Stein

It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself.

Gertrude Stein

This is the lesson that history teaches: repetition.

Gertrude Stein

History takes time. History makes memory.

Gertrude Stein

There is too much fathering going on just now and there is no doubt about it fathers are depressing.

Gertrude Stein

It is natural to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes to that siren until she allures us to our death.

Gertrude Stein

Very likely education does not make very much difference.

Gertrude Stein

I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed.

Gertrude Stein

There is no such thing as being good to your wife.

Gertrude Stein

A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables.

Gertrude Stein

Before the flowers of friendship faded friendship faded.

Gertrude Stein

Author Bio

  • NameGertrude Stein
  • DescriptionAmerican art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays
  • BornFebruary 3, 1874
  • DiedJuly 27, 1946
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Poet; Art Collector; Salon-holder; Autobiographer; Librettist
  • WorksThree Lives; Tender Buttons: Objects, Food, Rooms; The Making Of Americans; Four Saints In Three Acts; The Autobiography Of Alice B. Toklas; Everybody's Autobiography; Doctor Faustus Lights The Lights