Harold Nicolson Quotes

• The great secret of a successful marriage is to treat all disasters as incidents and none of the incidents as disasters.

  Harold Nicolson

  Relationship, Marriage, Successful

  53 Copy quote

• These, then, are the qualities of my ideal diplomatist. Truth, accuracy, calm, patience, good temper, modesty and loyalty. They are also the qualities of an ideal diplomacy. But, the reader may object, you have forgotten intelligence, knowledge, discernment, prudence, hospitality, charm, industry, courage and even tact. I have not forgotten them. I have taken them for granted.

  Harold Nicolson

  Loyalty, Taken, Quality

  "Diplomacy". Book by Harold George Nicolson, chapter 3, p. 126, 1939.

  22 Copy quote

• We are all inclined to judge ourselves by our ideals; others, by their acts.

  Harold Nicolson

  Humility, Judging, Judgement

  Quoted in Reader's Digest, May 1936

  20 Copy quote

• We were preparing not Peace only, but Eternal Peace. There was about us the halo of some divine mission. We must be alert, stern, righteous and ascetic. For we were bent on doing great, permanent and noble things.

  Harold Nicolson

  War, Remembrance, Noble

  "Peacemaking, 1919".

  16 Copy quote

• To be a good diarist, one must have a snouty, sneaky mind.

  Harold Nicolson

  Writing, Mind, Sneaky

  7 Copy quote

• Only one person in 1000 is a bore, and HE is interesting because he is one person in 1000.

  Harold Nicolson

  Interesting, Bores, Persons

  9 Copy quote

• Coaches should realize that the only way to conquer drudgery is by getting through it as efficiently as they can. A dull job slackly done becomes twice as dull, whereas a dull job performed as efficiently as possible becomes half as dull. Effort appears to be the main art of living.

  Harold Nicolson

  Sports, Art, Jobs

  9 Copy quote

• The worst thing, I fear, about being no longer young is that one is no longer young.

  Harold Nicolson

  Inspirational, Young, Worst

  6 Copy quote

• The Irish do not want anyone to wish them well; they want everyone to wish their enemies ill.

  Harold Nicolson

  Enemy, Wish, Want

  Harold Nicolson (1943). “The Desire to Please: A Story of Hamilton Rowan and the United Irishmen”

  8 Copy quote

• Intellectuals incline to be individualists, or even independents, are not team conscious and tend to regard obedience as a surrender of personality.

  Harold Nicolson

  Team, Personality, Surrender

  4 Copy quote

• Few things are more agreeable than the spectacle of a man who loses his temper; we should be grateful to such people for providing us with moments of often unsullied delight.

  Harold Nicolson

  Grateful, Men, People

  Harold Nicolson (1960). “Good Behaviour”

  4 Copy quote

• The gift of broadcasting is, without question, the lowest human capacity to which any man could attain.

  Harold Nicolson

  Men, Broadcasting, Capacity

  28 Copy quote

• Berlin stimulates like arsenic.

  Harold Nicolson

  Arsenic, Berlin

  Der Querschnitt. Quoted in Gordon, Mel (2000). "Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin", front fold, 1929.

  5 Copy quote

• Every schoolmaster after the age of forty-nine, is inclined to flatulence is apt to swallow frequently and to puff

  Harold Nicolson

  School, Age, Puff

  7 Copy quote

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