Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes

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Was it for pleasure that you followed them
Putting off your slippers at the door
To dance barefoot and blood-foot in the snow?
No.

What then? What glamoured you? No glamour at all;
Only that I remembered I was young
And had to put myself into a song.
How could time bear witness that I was tall,
Silken, and made for love, if I did not so?
I do not know.

- Earl Cassilis's Lady
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Was it for pleasure that
There are not enough poems in praise of bed ...
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: There are not enough poems
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.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: In the morning I had
She could never feel love for him. Love was what she felt for birds - a free gift, unrequired, unrequited, invulnerable.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: She could never feel love
One cannot revoke a true happiness.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: One cannot revoke a true
The Church has lost a great religious poet in me; but I have lost an infinity of fun in the church, so the loss is even.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: The Church has lost a
Here is a kitchen improvement, in return for Peacock. For roasting or basting a chicken, render down your fat or butter with cider: about a third cider. Let it come together slowly, till the smell of cider and the smell of fat are as one. This will enliven even a frozen chicken.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Here is a kitchen improvement,
Is it the realization that people recently psychoanalyzed tend to be dreadful bores which makes the U.S.A. army reject them for the draft?
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Is it the realization that
When other helpers fail and comforts flee, when the senses decay and the mind moves in a narrower and narrower circle, when the grasshopper is a burden and the postman brings no letters, and even the Royal Family is no longer quite what it was, an obituary column stands fast.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: When other helpers fail and
Watching these happy beings for whom weeping was impossible, he had become incapable of grief; watching their inconsistencies, he had become incapable of knowing right from wrong; disregarded by them he had become incapable of disappointment.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Watching these happy beings for
Theology, Mr. Fortune found, is a more accommodating subject than mathematics; its technique of exposition allows greater latitude. For instance when you are gravelled for matter there is always the moral to fall back upon. Comparisons too may be drawn, leading cases cited, types and antetypes analysed and anecdotes introduced. Except for Archimedes mathematics is singularly naked of anecdotes.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Theology, Mr. Fortune found, is
How dreadful it is that because of our wills we can never love anything without messing it around! We couldn't even love a tree, a stone even; for sooner or later we should be pruning the tree or chipping a bit off the stone.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: How dreadful it is that
Once, when I was a young lady and on a night express ... I was awakened by a man coming in from the corridor and taking hold of my leg ... Quite as much to my own astonishment as his, I uttered the most appalling growl that ever came out of a tigress. He fled, poor man, without a word: and I lay there, trembling slightly, not at my escape but at my potentialities.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Once, when I was a
Cooking is the most succulent of human pleasures.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Cooking is the most succulent
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.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Those who spend their strength
Elizabeth ... had the prerogative of the rich that she could be generous with large sums and niggardly over small ones ...
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Elizabeth ... had the prerogative
Idleness is righteous if it is comfortable. Uncomfortable idleness is sin & sinful waste.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Idleness is righteous if it
Children driven good are apt to be driven mad.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Children driven good are apt
One reason why my memory decays is that I have three cats, all so loving and insistent that they play cat's-cradle with every train of thought. They drove me distracted while I was having influenza, gazing at me with large eyes and saying: O Sylvia, you are so ill, you'll soon be dead. And who will feed us then? Feed us now!
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: One reason why my memory
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.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: I have an idea that
And another day is tucked under my wing.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: And another day is tucked
But what are wishes, compared with longings?
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: But what are wishes, compared
Love is the only real patriation, and without one's dear one sits in a dreary and boring exile.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Love is the only real
One need not write in a diary what one is to remember for ever.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: One need not write in
My grandmother was unsurpassable at sitting. She would sit on tombstones, glaciers, small hard benches with ants crawling over them, fragments of public monuments, other people's wheelbarrows, and when one returned one could be sure of finding her there, conversing affably with the owner of the wheelbarrow.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: My grandmother was unsurpassable at
If one were to include one-tenth of the remarkable people one knows, in one's fiction, no one would accept it. Real life remains one's private menagerie.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: If one were to include
Spring is strictly sentimental, self-regarding; but I burn more careless in the autumn bonfire.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Spring is strictly sentimental, self-regarding;
The night was at her disposal. She might walk back to Great Mop and arrive very late; or she might sleep out and not trouble to arrive till to-morrow. Whichever she did Mrs Leak would not mind. That was one of the advantages of dealing with witches; they do not mind if you are a little odd in your ways, frown if you are late for meals, fret if you are out all night, pry and commiserate when at length you return. Lovely to be with people who prefer their thoughts to yours, lovely to live at your own sweet will, lovely to sleep out all night!
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: The night was at her
A story demanded to be written, and that is why I have not answered your letter before: a wrong-headed story, that would come blundering like a moth on my window, and stare in with small red eyes, and I the last writer in the world to manage such a subject. One should have more self-control. One should be able to say, Go away. You have come to the wrong inkstand, there is nothing for you here. But I am so weakminded that I cannot even say, Come next week.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: A story demanded to be
It was as easy for him to quit Bloomsbury for the Chilterns as for a cat to jump from a hard chair to a soft. Now after a little scrabbling and exploration he was curled up in the green lap and purring over the landscape.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: It was as easy for
She had thrown away twenty years of her life like a handful of old rags, but the wind had blown them back again, and dressed her in the old uniform.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: She had thrown away twenty
Sept.17 (1780). When we call loudly thro' the speaking-trumpet to Timothy ( the tortoise), he does not seem to regard the noise. Sept.18. Timothy eats heartily. Oct.3. No ring-ouzels seen this autumn yet. Timothy very dull.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Sept.17 (1780). When we call
Possessiveness cannot accept; it cannot even strike a fair bargain; it has to confer.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Possessiveness cannot accept; it cannot
All encounters with children are touched with social embarrassment.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: All encounters with children are
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.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: One cannot overestimate the power
My blood ran with this ink...
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: My blood ran with this
Oh, I am all for singing. If I had had children I should have hounded them into choirs & choral societies, and if they weren't good enough for that, I would have sent them out, to sing in the streets.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Oh, I am all for
I feel domesticity just slipping off me. It is a choice. Either one can let it go or one can intensify it. The people who intensify it seem to get quite a lot of interest out of that, too, and are as preoccupied as pirates.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: I feel domesticity just slipping
Sneezes ... always sound much louder to the sneezer than to the hearers. It is an acoustical peculiarity.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Sneezes ... always sound much
Laura also thought that the law had done a great deal to spoil Henry. It had changed his natural sturdy stupidity into a browbeating indifference to other people's point of view. He seemed to consider himself briefed by his Creator to turn into ridicule the opinions of those who disagreed with him, and to attribute dishonesty, idiocy, or a base motive to every one who supported a better case than he.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Laura also thought that the
There are some women in whom conscience is so strongly developed that it leaves little room for anything else. Love is scarcely felt before duty rushes to encase it, anger impossible because one must always be calm and see both sides, pity evaporates in expedients, even grief is felt as a sort of bruised sense of injury, a resentment that one should have grief forced upon one when one has always acted for the best.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: There are some women in
There is a period in one's life - perhaps not longer than six months - when one lives in two worlds at once ... It is the time when one has freshly learned to read. The Word, till then a denominating aspect of the Thing, has suddenly become detached from it and is perceived as a glittering entity, transparent and unseizable as a jellyfish, yet able to create an independent world that is both more recondite and more instantaneously convincing than the world one knew before.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: There is a period in
She was heavier than he expected - women always are.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: She was heavier than he
The baby romped on my lap like a short stout salmon.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: The baby romped on my
There is a moral, of course, and like all morals it is better not pursued.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: There is a moral, of
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.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: I wish I could be
Love amazes, but it does not surprise.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Love amazes, but it does
One doesn't become a witch to run around being harmful, or to run around being helpful either, a district visitor on a broomstick. It's to escape all that - to have a life of one's own, not an existence doled out to by others.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: One doesn't become a witch
Sitting here, and thus, she had attained to a state which she could never have desired, not even conceived. And being so unforeseen, so alien to her character and upbringing, her felicity had an absolute perfection; no comparison between the desired and the actual could tear holes in it, no ambition whisper, But this is not quite what you wanted, is it?
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Sitting here, and thus, she
When I die, I hope to think I have annoyed a great many people.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: When I die, I hope
No one wants to be praised for possibilities when one has submitted performances.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: No one wants to be
Inflation is the senility of democracies.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Inflation is the senility of
Young people are careless of their virginity; one day they may have it and the next not.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Young people are careless of
Laura was not in any way religious. She was not even religious enough to speculate towards irreligion.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Laura was not in any
It is only for a week or two that a broken chair or a door off its hinges is recognised for such. Soon, imperceptibly, it changes its character, and becomes the chair which is always left in the corner, the door which does not shut. A pin, fastening a torn valance, rusts itself into the texture of the stuff, is irremovable; the cracked dessert place and the stewpan with a hole in it, set aside until the man who rivets and solders should chance to come that way, become part of the dresser, are taken down and dusted and put back, and when the man arrives no one remembers them as things in need of repair. Five large keys rest inside the best soup-tureen, scrupulously preserved though no one knows what it was they once opened, and the pastry-cutter is there too, little missed, for the teacup without a handle has taken its place.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: It is only for a
We are also rather concerned about our moorhen who went mad while we were in Italy and began to build a nest in a tree ... she walks about in the tree, looking as uneasy yet persevering as a district visitor in a brothel.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: We are also rather concerned
God, an enormous darkness, hung looped over half her sky, an ever-present menace, a cloud waiting to break.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: God, an enormous darkness, hung
Wealth, if not a mere flash in the pan, compels the wealthy to become wealthier.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Wealth, if not a mere
That's why we become witches: to show our scorn of pretending life's a safe business, to satisfy our passion for adventure. It's not malice, or wickedness - well, perhaps it is wickedness, for most women love that - but certainly not malice, not wanting to plague cattle and make horrid children spout up pins and - what is it? - blight the genial bed.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: That's why we become witches:
all her thoughts slid together again like a pack of hounds that have picked up the scent.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: all her thoughts slid together
Happy is the day whose history is not written down.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Happy is the day whose
I wish you could see the two cats drowsing side by side in a Victorian nursing chair, their paws, their ears, their tails complementarily adjusted, their blue eyes blinking open on a single thought of when I shall remember it's their supper time. They might have been composed by Bach for two flutes.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: I wish you could see
Can you suggest any suitable aspersions to spread abroad about Mrs. Thatcher? It is idle to suggest she has unnatural relations with Mrs. Barbara Castle; what is needed is something socially lower: that she eats asparagus with knife and fork, or serves instant mash potatoes.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Can you suggest any suitable
For the last six weeks I have found myself pestered by some characters in search of an author ...
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: For the last six weeks
Nine people out of ten (in Germany and England, perhaps ten people) would rather wait for their rights than fight for their rights.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Nine people out of ten
I do apologize for writing by hand - and so badly. I shall soon be like Helen Thomas, notoriously illegible. In her last letter only two words stood out plain: 'Blood pressure.' Subsequent research demonstrated that what she had actually written was 'Beloved friends.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: I do apologize for writing
Only two things are real to me: my love and my death. In between them, I merely exist as a scatter of senses.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: Only two things are real
The amusement she had drawn from their disapproval was a slavish remnant, a derisive dance on the north bank of the Ohio. There was no question of forgiving them. She had not, in any case, a forgiving nature; and the injury they had done her was not done by them. If she were to start forgiving she must needs forgive Society, the Law, the Church, the History of Europe, the Old Testament, great-great-aunt Salome and her prayer-book, the Bank of England, Prostitution, the Architect of Apsley Terrace, and half a dozen other useful props of civilization. All she could do was to go on forgetting them. But now she was able to forget them without flouting them by her forgetfulness.
Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes: The amusement she had drawn
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