Quote

After the desperate years of their own war, after six years of repression inside Spain and six years of horror in exile, these people remain intact in spirit. They are armed with a transcendent faith they have never won, and yet they have never accepted defeat.

Martha Gellhorn

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Martha Gellhorn
Age: 89 †
Born: 1908
Born: November 8
Died: 1998
Died: February 15
Journalist
Novelist
War Correspondent
Writer
St. Louis
Missouri
Martha Ellis Gellhorn
Inside
Spain
Faith
Armed
War
Desperate
Spirit
Six
Years
Defeat
Intact
Never
Accepted
Repression
People
Horror
Transcendent
Remain
Exile

More quotes by Martha Gellhorn

Image
Why do people talk of the horrors of old age? It's great. I feel like a fine old car with the parts gradually wearing out, but I'm not complaining,... Those who find growing old terrible are people who haven't done what they wanted with their lives.
Martha Gellhorn
Image
Citizenship is a tough occupation which obliges the citizen to make his own informed opinion and stand by it.
Martha Gellhorn
Image
It is alleged that half a million Spanish men, women and children fled to France after the Franco victory.
Martha Gellhorn
Image
By its existence, the Peace Movement denies that governments know best it stands for a different order of priorities: the human race comes first.
Martha Gellhorn
Image
the ends never justify the means because IT never ends.
Martha Gellhorn
Image
I do not see myself as a footnote to someone else's life.
Martha Gellhorn
Image
Life is not long at all, never long enough, but days are very long indeed.
Martha Gellhorn
Image
Public opinion, though slow as lava, in the end forces governments towards more sanity, more justice. My heroes and heroines are all private citizens.
Martha Gellhorn
Image
But now that the guerrilla fighting is over, the Spaniards are again men without a country or families or homes or work, though everyone appreciates very much what they did.
Martha Gellhorn
Image
Gradually I came to realize that people will more readily swallow lies than truth, as if the taste of lies was homey, appetizing: a habit.
Martha Gellhorn
Image
A broken heart is such a shabby thing, like poverty and failure and the incurable diseases which are also deforming. I hate it and am ashamed of it, and I must somehow repair this heart and put it back into its normal condition, as a tough somewhat scarred but operating organ.
Martha Gellhorn
Image
I didn't write. I just wandered about.
Martha Gellhorn
Image
The only way I can pay back for what fate and society have handed me is to try, in minor totally useless ways, to make an angry sound against injustice.
Martha Gellhorn
Image
All amateur travellers have experienced horror journeys, long or short, sooner or later, one way or another. As a student of disaster, I note that we react alike to our tribulations: frayed and bitter at the time, proud afterwards. Nothing is better for self-esteem than survival.
Martha Gellhorn
Image
Then somebody suggested I should write about the war, and I said I didn't know anything about the war. I did not understand anything about it. I didn't see how I could write it
Martha Gellhorn
Image
I tell you loneliness is the thing to master. Courage and fear, love, death are only parts of it and can easily be ruled afterwards. If I make myself master my own loneliness there will be peace or safety: and perhaps these are the same.
Martha Gellhorn
Image
travel is compost for the mind
Martha Gellhorn
Image
The human spirit can be indomitable and it is this rare quality that is not at all to be expected that makes survivors of us all, the human race in the grand scheme of things.
Martha Gellhorn
Image
The world's fat is badly divided.
Martha Gellhorn
Image
People often say, with pride, 'I'm not interested in politics.' They might as well say, 'I'm not interested in my standard of living, my health, my job, my rights, my freedoms, my future or any future.' ... If we mean to keep any control over our world and lives, we must be interested in politics.
Martha Gellhorn