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I rarely believe anything, because at the time of believing I am not really there to believe.

Gertrude Stein

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Gertrude Stein
Age: 72 †
Born: 1874
Born: February 3
Died: 1946
Died: July 27
Art Collector
Author
Autobiographer
Collector
Librettist
Playwright
Poet
Salonnière
Writer
Allegheny
Pennsylvania
Gertruda Stein
Gertruda Staĭn
Gertrude Stein
Really
Time
Believing
Rarely
Literature
Anything
Believe

More quotes by Gertrude Stein

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It always did bother me that the American public were more interested in me than in my work. And after all there is no sense in it because if it were not for my work they would not be interested in me so why should they not be more interested in my work than in me. That is one of the things one has to worry about in America.
Gertrude Stein
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How do you like what you have. This is a question that anybody can ask anybody. Ask it.
Gertrude Stein
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If you can do it then why do it?
Gertrude Stein
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If the stars are suns and the earth is the earth and there are men only upon this earth and anything can put an end to anything and any dog does anything like anybody does it what is the difference between eternity and anything.
Gertrude Stein
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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.
Gertrude Stein
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To be regularly gay was to do every day the gay thing that they did every day. To be regularly gay was to end every day at the same time after they had been regularly gay. They were regularly gay. They were gay every day. They ended every day in the same way, at the same time, and they had been every day regularly gay.
Gertrude Stein
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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
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The only thing that is different from one time to another is what is seen and what is seen depends upon how everybody is doing everything.
Gertrude Stein
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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. And if you hold back and try to be always where you have been before, you will go dry.
Gertrude Stein
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Silent gratitude isn't very much to anyone.
Gertrude Stein
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America is my country and Paris is my hometown.
Gertrude Stein
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It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself.
Gertrude Stein
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A masterpiece... may be unwelcome but it is never dull.
Gertrude Stein
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Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.
Gertrude Stein
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Writing and reading is to me synonymous with existing.
Gertrude Stein
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More great Americans were failures than they were successes. They mostly spent their lives in not having a buyer for what they had for sale.
Gertrude Stein
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Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen.
Gertrude Stein
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The nineteenth century was completely lacking in logic, it had cosmic terms and hopes, and aspirations, and discoveries, and ideals but it had no logic.
Gertrude Stein
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One cannot come back too often to the question what is knowledge and to the answer knowledge is what one knows.... Knowledge is the thing you know and how can you know more than you do know.
Gertrude Stein
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I cannot write too much upon how necessary it is to be completely conservative that is particularly traditional in order to be free.
Gertrude Stein