In a happy marriage it is the wife who provides the climate, the husband the landscape.

- Gerald Brenan

Wisdom is keeping a sense of fallibility of all our views and opinions.

- Gerald Brenan

Intellectuals are people who believe that ideas are of more importance than values. That is to say, their own ideas and other people's values.

- Gerald Brenan

Everyone is a bore to someone. That is unimportant. The thing to avoid is being a bore to oneself.

- Gerald Brenan

We confess our bad qualities to others out of fear of appearing naive or ridiculous by not being aware of them.

- Gerald Brenan

A healthy old fellow, who is not a fool, is the happiest creature living.

- Gerald Brenan

As I get older I seem to believe less and less and yet to believe what I do believe more and more.

- Gerald Brenan

If you wish to be brothers, let the arms fall from your hands. One cannot love while holding offensive arms.

- Gerald Brenan

Middle age snuffs out more talent than even wars or sudden death does.

- Gerald Brenan

Those who have some means think that the most important thing in the world is love. The poor know that it is money.

- Gerald Brenan

We are closer to the ants than to the butterflies. Very few people can endure much leisure.

- Gerald Brenan

You generally hear that what a man doesn't know doesn't hurt him, but in business what a man doesn't know does hurt.

- Gerald Brenan

Miller is not really a writer but a non-stop talker to whom someone has given a typewriter.

- Gerald Brenan

The cliche is dead poetry.

- Gerald Brenan