Winifred Holtby Quotes

The things that one most wants to do are the things that are probably most worth doing.

The crown of life is neither happiness nor annihilation; it is understanding.

Is this the final treachery of time, that the old become a burden upon the young?

This alone is to be feared - the closed mind, the sleeping imagination, the death of the spirit. The death of the body is to that, I think, a little thing.

Nature is not silent, and never was a name more derisively inappropriate than when we speak of these non-human creatures who hoot and crow and bray as the dumb animals.

A sense of humor is so handy, isn't it? It lets you see both sides of a question so that you never need do anything.

I am much perturbed by this business of sickness. Our bodies seem so easily to leap into the saddle where our minds should be. People who are ill become changelings.

it is the brevity of life which makes it tolerable; its experiences have value because they have an end.

We each live in a private, distorted, individual world - stars turning in space, warmed for a moment by each other's light, then lost in infinite distance.

I am fierce for work. Without work I am nothing.

There's never been a lack of men willing to die bravely. The trouble is to find a few able to live sensibly.

no truth is strong enough to defeat a well-established legend.

Life flows on over death as water closes over a stone dropped into a pool. ... Fate is certain; death is certain; but the courage and nobility of men and women matter more than these.

the damned book I am writing is like the driveling of a weak-kneed sea calf. If I were sufficiently strong minded, I should tear it up an start again. But I don't.

The world, with all its beauty and adventure, its richness and variety, is darkened by cruelty. Death, if it ends the loveliness, the adventure, ends also that. Death balances the picture.

What a strange distance there is between ill people and well ones.

Really, trees are nearly as important as men, and much better behaved.

Oh, time betrays us. Time is the great enemy.

The greatest mercy, I have often thought, of the Mediterranean coast lies in its mosquitoes. Did we not suffer from their unwelcome attention, we could not bear our holidays to end.

But questioning does not mean the end of loving, and loving does not mean the abnegation of intelligence

Love needs the stiffening of respect, the give and take of equality.

Youth knows no remedy for grief but death.

It's the things you don't do, not the things you do, you feel most sorry for.

The only difficulty is to know what bits to choose and what to leave out. Novel-writing is not creation, it is selection.

But to write - that is grief and labor; and to read what one has written - how unlike the story as one saw it; how dull, how spirtless - that is enough to send one weeping to bed.

I advise nobody to drown sorrow in cocoa. It is bad for the figure and it does not alleviate the sorrow.

If you are rich, you have lovely cars, and jars full of flowers, and books in rows, and a wireless, and the best sort of gramophone and meringues for supper.

Surely, if life is good, it is good throughout its substance; we cannot separate men's activities from women's and say, these are worthy of praise and these unworthy.

The more I see of dogs, the more I like children.

If we haven't a grouch against Fortune, we seem unable to avoid one against ourselves.

All adventuring is rash, and all innovations dangerous. But not nearly so dangerous as stagnation and dry rot. From grooves, cliques, clichés and resignation - Good Lord deliver us!

I like a bit of color myself, I must say. At my time of life, if you wear nothing but black, people might think you were too mean to change frocks between funerals.

[On golf:] One of the most distressing defects of civilization.

why haven't we seventy lives? One is no use.

Progress? It ought to be stopped, that's what I say. If the Lord meant chickens to come out of incubators he'd never have made hens, it stands to reason.

Remorse ... is one of the many afflictions for which time finds a cure.

What with the reviews of critics, the sarcasms of one's friends, the reproaches of one's own taste, there's precious little peace after publishing a book.

Everybody's tragedy is somebody's nuisance.

Those who prepare for war get it.

Progress. There's a good deal too much o' this progress about nowadays, an', what's more, it'll have to stop.

Teachers have power. We may cripple them by petty economics; by Government regulations, by the foolish criticism of an uninformed press; but their power exists for good or evil.

the ruder lecturers are, and the louder their voices, the more converts they make to their opinions.

God give me work till my life shall end And life till my work is done.

The crown of life is neither happiness nor annihilation it is understanding.