Harold Nicolson Quotes

We are all inclined to judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their acts.

We were preparing not Peace only, but Eternal Peace. There was about us the halo of some divine mission. We were bent on doing great, permanent noble things.

The great secret of a successful marriage is to treat all disasters as incidents and none of the incidents as disasters.

The Irish do not want anyone to wish them well; they want everyone to wish their enemies ill.

Berlin stimulates like arsenic.

Let us educate the younger generation to be shy in and out of season: to edge behind the furniture: to say spasmodic and ill-digested things: to twist their feet round the protective feet of sofas and armchairs: to feel that their hands belong to someone else
that they are objects, which they long to put down on some table away from themselves.
For shyness is the protective fluid within which our personalities are able to develop into natural shapes. Without this fluid the character becomes merely standardized or imitative: it is within the tender velvet sheath of shyness that the full flower of idiosyncrasy is nurtured: it is from this sheath alone that it can eventually unfold itself, coloured and undamaged. Let the shy understand, therefore, that their disability is not only an inconvenience, but also a privilege. Let them regard their shyness as a gift rather than as an affliction. Let them consider how intolerable are those of their contemporaries who are not also shy.

It must be confessed that the English gentleman, especially if he be devoted to field and other sports, is apt to attribute slight importance to mental felicity or learning. I happen to enjoy the system, having suffered much on the continent from people who pretend to be intellectuals when they are not. Yet it is undeniable that a type of civility that excludes or misprises the humanities compares ill with the ideal of the perfectly endowed and developed human being which the Greeks and the best teachers of the Renaissance held as examples for emulation.

Intellectuals incline to be individualists, or even independents, are not team conscious and tend to regard obedience as a surrender of personality.

Every schoolmaster after the age of forty-nine, is inclined to flatulence is apt to swallow frequently and to puff

Only one person in 1000 is a bore, and HE is interesting because he is one person in 1000.

Coaches should realize that the only way to conquer drudgery is by getting through it as efficiently as they can. A dull job slackly done becomes twice as dull, whereas a dull job performed as efficiently as possible becomes half as dull. Effort appears to be the main art of living.

These, then, are the qualities of my ideal diplomatist. Truth, accuracy, calm, patience, good temper, modesty and loyalty. They are also the qualities of an ideal diplomacy. But, the reader may object, you have forgotten intelligence, knowledge, discernment, prudence, hospitality, charm, industry, courage and even tact. I have not forgotten them. I have taken them for granted.

Few things are more agreeable than the spectacle of a man who loses his temper; we should be grateful to such people for providing us with moments of often unsullied delight.