Marriage is an arrangement by which two people start by getting the best out of each other and often end by getting the worst.

- Gerald Brenan

Every writer and artist wonders what in the world people of other professions can find to live for.

- Gerald Brenan

Old age takes away from us what we have inherited and gives us what we have earned.

- Gerald Brenan

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

- Gerald Brenan

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

- Gerald Brenan

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

- 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

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

- Gerald Brenan

Words are as recalcitrant as circus animals, and the unskilled trainer can crack his whip at them in vain.

- Gerald Brenan