Taylor Caldwell Quotes

I have been constantly betrayed and deceived all my life.

There is no solid satisfaction in any career for a woman like myself. There is no home, no true freedom, no hope, no joy, no expectation for tomorrow, no contentment. I would rather cook a meal for a man and bring him his slippers and feel myself in the protection of his arms than have all the citations and awards and honors I have received worldwide, including the Ribbon of Legion of Honor and my property and my bank accounts. They mean nothing to me. And I am only one among the millions of sad women like myself.

It's a funny thing about love: you don't need to have it returned to love somebody. Loving's enough.
A Prologue to Love

It is inevitable, that eventually the people will demand absolute security from the state ... And absolute security is absolute slavery.

I am the skeptic of skeptics.

Honest men live on charity in their age; the almshouses are full of men who never stole a copper penny. Honest men are the fools and the saints.

It is not always wise to appear singular.

The more wants a man has, the less freedom.

Despair is sometimes the great energizer of the mind, though sometimes its flowering may be sterile.

I have been the victim of heartless malice.

What manner of men had lived in those days...who had so eagerly surrendered their sovereignty for a lie and a delusion? Why had they been so anxious to believe that the government could solve problems for them which had been pridefully solved, many times over, by their fathers? Had their characters become so weak and debased, so craven and emasculated, that offers of government dole had become more important than their liberty and their humanity? Had they not know that power delegated to the government becomes the club of tyrants? They must have known. They had their own history to remember, and the history of five thousand years. Yet, they had willingly and knowingly, with all this knowledge, declared themselves unfit to manage their own affairs and had placed their lives, which belonged to God only, in the hands of sinister men who had long plotted to enslave them, by wars, by "directives," by "emergencies." In the name of the American people, the American people had been made captive.

It is a waste of money to help those who show no desire to help themselves.

If they can't do it in California, it can't be done anywhere.

An honest politician is either a hypocrite - or he is doomed.

Though I am a Catholic, a professing one, I have serious doubts about the survival of the human personality after death.

I like animals because they are not consciously cruel and don't betray each other.

No man is more abhorred than a man who is different from his neighbors. They feel violated and threatened if one dares to be as they are not.

On the day when you again allow abominable men to confiscate your freedom, your money, your lives, your private property, your manhood and your sacred honor, in the name of "security' or "national emergency' you will die, and never again shall you be free. If plotters again destroy your Republic, they will do it by your greedy and ignorant assent, by your disregard of your neighbors' rights, by your apathy and your stupidity. We were brought to the brink of universal death and darkness because we had become that most contemptible of people -- an angerless one. Keep alive and vivid all your righteous anger against traitors, against those who would abrogate your Constitution, against those who would lead you to wars with false slogans and cunning appeals to your patriotism.

Learning should be a joy and full of excitement. It is life's greatest adventure; it is an illustrated excursion into the minds of the noble and the learned.

The American insanity for Loving Everybody is ruining my good temper and delivering my stomach to enormous bouts with acidity.

Are we not all desperate one way or another?

If a nation has not God that nation must fall, but if a nation has God then all the powers of evil, and all the armies, cannot shake its foundations; no, not even if the whole world is arrayed against it.

I am not alone at all, I thought. I was never alone at all. And that, of course, is the message of Christmas. We are never alone. Not when the night is darkest, the wind coldest, the world seemingly most indifferent. For this is still the time God chooses.

Money? I lost all taste for it.

If there is a God, then he was particularly harsh to me.

I am not convinced that there is such a thing as a soul.

You can be happy with money and you can be wretched with it. It depends on what kind of person you are.
A Prologue to Love

I've always enjoyed poor health.

'He is very ugly,' said his mother.

Those who claim to have had happy lives seem to be silly fools.

Mankind adores its betrayers, and murders its saviors.

People are scared to death of dying. I am the opposite.

We are not old unless we desire to be.

Freedom was given to humanity by God. But, governments, if they can help it, never give freedom. They just hand out slavery with slogans.

God's 'failures' are really man's failures ...

Tel Aviv appeals to me.

A statement that is repugnant to one's beliefs can be as true as one that is pleasurable.

The world is a penal institution.

I have written two medical novels. I have never studied medicine, never seen an operation.

I am a Westerner of Westerners!

Men who retain irony are not to be trusted. They can't always resist an impulse to tickle themselves.

I'm not that interested in people.

Animals do not betray; they do not exploit; they do not oppress; they do not enslave; they do not sin. They have their being, and their being is honest, and who can say this of man?

Character, I am sure, lies in the genes.

Even the most malignant gods would not continue to inflict life upon humanity, time without end.

My relatives used to laugh when I talked of being a writer.

Don't let the past steal your present. This is the message of Christmas: We are never alone.

My dreams are all follies.

I am deeply convinced that happiness does not exist in this world.

Man was the outlaw, the rebel, the distorted shape that scarred the earth, the voice that silenced the music of Eden, the hand that raised up obscenities and blasphemies. Man was the pariah-dog, the moral leper in this translucent mirror of Heaven. He was the muddier of crystal waters, the despoiler of forests, the murderer of the innocent, the challenger against God. He was the assassin of the saints and the prophets, for they spoke of what he WOULD NOT HEAR, in the darkness of his spirit!

You'll notice that it is the haters of humanity who are always trying to reform it. They want to feel superior to the general run of mankind.

We, perhaps, have corrupted our children and our grandchildren by heedless affluence, by a lack of manliness, by giving the younger generation more money and liberty than their youth can handle, by indoctrinating them with sinister ideologies and false values, by permitting them, as young children, to indulge themselves in imprudence to superiors and defiance of duly constituted authority, by lack of prudent, swift punishment when the transgressed, by coddling and pampering them when they were children and protecting them from a very dangerous world

My childhood was appalling.

I often reread books I have written.

Everyone living is doomed

A wise man distrusts his neighbor. A wiser man distrusts both his neighbor and himself. The wisest man of all distrusts his government.

I gratefully look forward to oblivion, but I must be sure of it.

Yes," said Pericles. "Today's patriotism may be tomorrow's treason, if it serves any judge or politician. And so it would go with any statute you might define today, no matter how explicit the terms. Let us suppose that a future Roman Head of Stae is a plotting and ambitious his country. So he might say to his pople, 'I love my country and in the name of that love I propose such and such an amendment to the Constitution, of which our fathers would have approved in the light of today's needs and changing circumstances. In truth, the Constitution of our fathers really means so-and-so.' I assure you, gentlemen, that he will already have a band of fellow traitors who will uphold him, and help to confuse the citizens. Then, if any patriot would oppose him the traitor will denounce him for treason! You can be certain, then,, that the unfortunate patriot would suffer the penalty for the alleged crime.

The very idea of carrying my memory into eternity devastated me, and I took refuge in atheism.

But the people in the old country love their children. We have big families, and by the time a child is a year old he knows where he fits in the family and what he should do and what he shouldn't do. He knows his parents love him but that they're not going to stand for any nonsense and tantrums. So he is satisfied and feels safe. American children never feel safe. -The Listener

If genetic memory or racial memory persists, is it possible that individual memory also exists from previous lives?

I never deviated from my grim determination to someday have all the money I needed and wanted.

I have anonymously helped many thousands.

Corrupt citizens breed corrupt rulers, and it is the mob who finally decides when virtue shall die.

But what was a body? Dust, dung, urine, itches. It was the light within which was important, and it was not significant if that light endured after death, or if the soul was blinded eternally in the endless night of the suspired flesh.