Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes

To think of losing is to lose already.

It is best as one grows older to strip oneself of possessions, to shed oneself downward like a tree, to be almost wholly earth before one dies.

... possessiveness cannot accept; it cannot even strike a fair bargain; it has to confer.

The fatal flaw of gravity; when you are down, everything falls down on you.

Spring is strictly sentimental, self-regarding; but I burn more careless in the autumn bonfire.

Inflation is the senility of democracies.

cooking is the most succulent of human pleasures.

One cannot overestimate the power of a good rancorous hatred on the part of the stupid. The stupid have so much more industry and energy to expend on hating. They build it up like coral insects.

Truth has beauty, power, and necessity.

[John Craske] painted like a man giving witness under oath to a wild story.

Idleness is righteous if it is comfortable. Uncomfortable idleness is sin & sinful waste.

And another day is tucked under my wing.

There is a moral, of course, and like all morals it is better not pursued.

Love is the only real patriation, and without one's dear one sits in a dreary and boring exile.

Young people are careless of their virginity; one day they may have it and the next not.

Nine people out of ten (in Germany and England, perhaps ten people) would rather wait for their rights than fight for their rights.

Anticipation of pleasure is a pleasure in itself.

When I die, I hope to think I have annoyed a great many people.

Total grief is like a minefield. No knowing when one will touch the tripwire.

There are not enough poems in praise of bed.

Wealth, if not a mere flash in the pan, compels the wealthy to become wealthier.

She was heavier than he expected - women always are.

... Rembrandt is not a painter at all. He is a creator, who creates his beings, three dimensional living beings, on a two-dimensional flat surface which acts as a mute, and enforces silence on them.

Elizabeth ... had the prerogative of the rich that she could be generous with large sums and niggardly over small ones.

The body, after all, older and wiser than soul, being first created, and, like a good horse, if given its way would go home by the best path and at the right pace.

Of all damnable offenses preaching prudence to the young is the most damnable.

The baby romped on my lap like a short stout salmon.

Children driven good are apt to be driven mad.

when the German propaganda tries to be winsome it is like a clown with homicidal mania - ludicrous and terrifying both at once.

All encounters with children are touched with social embarrassment.

I have an idea that conscience impedes quite as many merits as faults, is a sort of alloy, a nickel which may prevent silver from bending but also prevents it from shining.

In the morning I had decided that henceforth I only cared for easy loves. It is so degrading to have to persuade people into liking one, or one's works.

I realize that it is as one ages and loses one's natural force that one is at the mercy of heredity. The young are themselves: the aging, their parents' children.

Love amazes, but it does not surprise.

Rouen shone in dark sunlight and a storm swept it away from my eyes and churned up the broad river with waves which pounced up like cats as our train drew out of the arches of the bridge.

Belligerents always abolish war after a war.

I wish I could be a grandmother. It is wanton extravagance to have had a youth with no one to tell of it to when one grows old.

Reason is a poor hand at prophecies.

There are some women ... in whom conscience is so strongly developed that it leaves little room for anything else.

[On an anarchist acquaintance:] Everything in appearance the most alarmist aunt could wish.

Happiness is an immunity.

noise is a pollution.

I wasn't educated. I was very lucky.

One cannot revoke a true happiness.

Happy is the day whose history is not written down.

no one wants to be praised for possibilities when one has submitted performances.

Those who spend their strength in field and factory would rather hear that their emancipation is bound to come than that it is something to be hazardously purchased by struggle and sacrifice.

You are only young once. At the time it seems endless, and is gone in a flash; and then for a very long time you are old.

I seem to use this word 'kind' very frequently. When one is unhappy or anxious it is a quality one dwells on.

Only two things are real to me: my love and my death. In between them, I merely exist as a scatter of senses.