Winston Graham Quotes

I think dreams can come true, but not necessarily like fairy-tales. It's not always so perfect like that.

Life does not measure up to performing... Performing is perfect.

The realities of the world seldom measure up to the sublime designs of human imagination.

When a man becomes familiar with his goddess, she quickly sinks into a woman.

Refusing to be disillusioned is the cause of much of the suffering of human life. And this is how that suffering happens-if we love someone, but do not love God, we demand total perfection and righteousness from that person, and when we do not get it, we become cruel and vindictive; yet we are demanding of a human being which he or she cannot possibly give.

Yes, what is it like? Certainly not like she dreamed. But maybe that's okay. We want what we want. At home, she works herself into a frenzy worrying about what she isn't--and perhaps loses track of just where she is.

Love is nothing, nothing, nothing like they say.

I saw that everything famous and beautiful in the world, if we judge by the descriptions and drawings of writers and artists, always loses when we go to see it and examine it closely.

I can already feel myself getting fed up with boys and I haven't had anything to do with them yet" - Georgia Nicolson

I am an ordinary person, but carried to extremes.

So to compare your real life, or your partner or lover or whoever to a character in a movie, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. They don't map.

Ordinary is a word that has no meaning.

There are no perfect human beings! Persons can be found who are good, very good indeed, in fact, great. There do in fact exist creators, seers, sages, saints, shakers, and movers...even if they are uncommon and do not come by the dozen. And yet these very same people can at times be boring, irritating, petulant, selfish, angry, or depressed. To avoid disillusionment with human nature, we must first give up our illusions about it.

We're as average as everyday's wash.

Could the situation be that we no longer believe in that particular place? Or maybe we were all promised Heaven in our lifetimes, and what we ended up with can't help but suffer in comparison.

WORTH IT and perfect are different things. No one’s perfect, yet in romance, everyone becomes WORTH IT. And that’s the trick.

The impression that you are a demigod worried me. I wanted to be like an ordinary human being with virtues and vices.

For love to last, you had to have illusions or have no illusions at all. But you had to stick to one or the other. It was the switching back and forth that endangered things.

People want you to be ordinary.

Washington is the city where the big men of little towns come to be disillusioned

The families of our friends are always a disappointment.

The only people who become disillusioned are people who have illusions.

Intelligent people make many mistakes because they cannot believe the world is really as foolish as it is.

Be careful what you're doing, because no one is ever who you want them to be.

You must not contrast too strongly the hours of courtship with the years of possession.