Jan Struther Quotes

In childhood the daylight always fails too soon - except when there are going to be fireworks.

For to love, loveless, is a bitter pill:But to be loved, unloving, bitterer still.

swans ... always look as though they'd just been reading their own fan-mail.

to achieve unity without uniformity is the whole essence of the democratic way of life.

Punctuality is the thief of adventure.

[Gardening] is a means by which you can attain many valuable hours of solitude without being thought unsociable.

The worst of gardening is that it's so full of metaphors one hardly knows where to begin.

Words were the only net to catch a mood, the only sure weapon against oblivion.

Constructive destruction is one of the most delightful employments in the world, and in civilized life the opportunities for it are only too rare.

The importance of the ordinary citizen is very greatly underestimated - not so much by those in authority as by the ordinary citizen himself.

I can't abide cats myself, but of course we have to have one in the kitchen to deal with the mice. I insisted on getting a black one, because anything else shows the dirt so in London.

O love's a simple word to sayWith nature aiding and abetting

To be entirely at leisure for one day is to be for one day an immortal

And I am a mockery, who was God before.

When there is a world scarcity of any commodity, whether it's food or free speech, then the whole world must go on rations in order that eventually the whole world may have it again in plenty.

To visit a new country for the first time is great fun; but it is even greater fun to introduce somebody else to a country that you know.

It seemed to her sometimes that the most important thing about marriage was not a home or children or a remedy against sin, but simply there being always an eye to catch.

how much of the fun of parenthood lay in watching the children remake, with delighted wonder, one's own discoveries.

Giving a party is like having a baby: its conception is more fun than its completion; and once you have begun it, it is almost impossible to stop.

One is what one remembers: no more, no less.

It took me forty years on earth To reach this sure conclusion: There is no Heaven but clarity, No Hell except confusion.

librarianship is one of the few callings in the world for which is it still possible to feel unqualified admiration and respect.

It's just as important to marry the right life as the right person.

...[T]he mechanics of life should never be allowed to interfere with living.

...[Y]ou cannot successfully navigate the future unless you keep always framed beside it a small clear image of the past.

It's as important to marry the right life as it is the right person.

...[A] certain degree of un-understanding (not mis-, but un-) is the only possible sanctuary which one human being can offer to another in the midst of the devastating intimacy of a happy marriage.