Gertrude Stein was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and made France her home for the remainder of her life. Profoundly inspirational Gertrude Stein quotes will encourage you to think a little deeper than you usually would and broaden your perspective.
If you’re searching for poetry quotes that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of famous Horace quotes, top John Keats quotes and greatest Omar Khayyam quotes.
Famous Gertrude Stein Quotes
Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense Gertrude Stein
A very important thing is not to make up your mind that you are any one thing
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
For a very long time, everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts
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
It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business
It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much, doing nothing, really doing nothing Gertrude Stein
It is the human habit to think in centuries from a grandparent to a grandchild because it just does take about a hundred years for things to cease to have the same meaning as they did before
Growing has no connection with audience
Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense
Audience has no connection with identity
You are extraordinary within your limits, but your limits are extraordinary
I like a thing simple but it must be simple through complication
America is my country, and Paris is my hometown
I do want to get rich but I never want to do what there is to get rich Gertrude Stein, Everybody’s Autobiography
All the world knows how to cry but not all the world knows how to sigh Sighing is extra
We are always the same age inside Gertrude Stein
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
Anything one does every day is important and imposing and anywhere one lives is interesting and beautiful Gertrude Stein
So many words to use. Oh, do not say that words have a use
There ain’t no answer
Artists do not experiment. Experiment is what scientists do; they initiate an operation of unknown factors to be instructed by its results An artist puts down what he knows and at every moment it is what he knows at that moment
There ain’t gonna be any answer
Art isn’t everything. It’s just about everything
There never has been an answer
The thing that differentiates man from animals is money
There’s your answer Gertrude Stein
Americans are very friendly and very suspicious, that is what Americans are and that is what always upsets the foreigner, who deals with them, they are so friendly how can they be so suspicious they are so suspicious how can they be so friendly but they just are
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
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
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
There is no such thing as repetition Only insistence
Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something Gertrude Stein
Disillusionment in living is finding that no one can really ever be agreeing with you completely in anything
Anything scares me, anything scares anyone but really after all considering how dangerous everything is nothing is really very frightening Gertrude Stein
The Jews have produced only three originative geniuses Christ, Spinoza, and myself
There is no such thing as repetition. Only insistence Gertrude Stein
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
It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realize 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
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
America is my country, and Paris is my home town Gertrude Stein
Love is the skillful audacity required to share an inner life
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
If everyone were not so indolent they would realise that beauty is beauty even when it is irritating and stimulating not only when it is accepted and classic
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
I always say that you cannot tell what a picture really is or what an object really is until you dust it every day and you cannot tell what a book is until you type it or proof read it It then does something to you that only reading it never can do
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
Paris was the place that suited us who were to create the twentieth century art and literature
