Jan Struther Quotes & Sayings

And I am a mockery, who was God before. — Jan Struther

There is practically no difference at all between a family and a nation, except the difference in size. A family is a nation seen through the wrong end of a telescope; a nation is a family seen through the right end of a telescope, and I don't believe it is possible to achieve a happy and successful family life, or a happy and successful national life, unless we bear this simple fact in mind and behave accordingly. — Jan Struther

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

Physical weather certainly is beyond our control ... But human weather - the psychological climate of the world - is not beyond our control. The human race is its own rain and its own sun. It creates its own cyclones and anti-cyclones. The ridges of high pressure which we sometimes enjoy, the troughs of low pressure which we so often endure, are of our own making and nobody else's. — Jan Struther

This was the cream of marriage, this nightly turning out of the day's pocketful of memories, this deft habitual sharing of two pairs of eyes, two pairs of ears. It gave you, in a sense, almost a double life: though never, on the other hand, quite a single one. — Jan Struther

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. — Jan Struther

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. — Jan Struther

[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. — Jan Struther

The fact that we are now crusaders needn't blind us to the fact that for a very long time we have been, as Badger would say, echidnas. I can think of a hundred ways already in which the war has "brought us to our senses." But it oughtn't to need a war to make a nation paint its kerbstones white, carry rear-lamps on its bicycles, and give all its slum children a holiday in the country. And it oughtn't to need a war to make us talk to each other in buses, and invent our own amusements in the evenings, and live simply, and eat sparingly, and recover the use of our legs, and get up early enough to see the sun rise. However, it has needed one: which is about the severest criticism our civilization could have. — Jan Struther

Swans ... always look as though they'd just been reading their own fan-mail. — Jan Struther

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. — Jan Struther

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

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

For really it was the refinement of civilized cruelty, this spick, span, and ingenious affair of shining leather and gleaming steel, which hoisted you and tilted you and fitted reassuringly into the small of your back and cupped your head tenderly between padded cushions. It ensured for you a more complete muscular relaxation than any armchair that you could buy for your own home: but it left your tormented nerves without even the solace of a counter-irritant. In the old days the victim's attention had at least been distracted by an ache in the back, a crick in the neck, pins and needles in the legs, and the uneasy tickling of plush under the palm. But now, too efficiently suspended between heaven and earth, you were at liberty to concentrate on hell. — Jan Struther

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. — Jan Struther

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

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

It was more like a form of claustrophobia
a dread of exchanging the freedom of her own self-imposed routine for the inescapable burden of somebody else's. — Jan Struther

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

Scots are born exiles, and Scotland the perfect country to be exiled from. Do not imagine that I am running down Scotland. Far from it ... No, what I mean is that Scotland's beauties, though undeniable, are obvious ones, easy to carry in the heart, easy even to describe to the benighted members of less fortunate races. Lakes, islands and mountains, heather and rowan, broad straths and narrow glens - these are jewels easily worn in the memory ... — Jan Struther

Clem Miniver: She was a good cook, as good cooks go. And as good cooks go, she went. — Jan Struther

There was one bursting now, a delicate constellation of many-coloured stars which drifted down and lingered in the still air ... The final rocket went up, a really large one, a piece of reckless extravagance. Its sibilant uprush was impressive, dragonlike; it soared twice as high as any they had had before ... The sparks from the rocket came pouring down the sky in a slow golden cascade, vanishing one by one into a lake of darkness. — Jan Struther

However long the horror continued, one must not get to the stage of refusing to think about it. To shrink from direct pain was bad enough, but to shrink from vicarious pain was the ultimate cowardice. And whereas to conceal direct pain was a virtue, to conceal vicarious pain was a sin. Only by feeling it to the utmost, and by expressing it, could the rest of the world help to heal the injury which had caused it. Money, food, clothing, shelter - people could give all these and still it would not be enough; it would not absolve them from paying also, in full, the imponderable tribute of grief. — Jan Struther

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

That's what any decent mind ought to do for its owner when she lets it off the leash - just go bounding away into the long grass and bring back a really profound thought, laying it at her feet all furry and palpitating. C'mon now. Hey los'! — Jan Struther

Nature has decreed that for what men suffer by having to shave, be killed in battle, and eat the legs of chickens, women make amends by housekeeping, childbirth, and writing all the letters for both of them ... — Jan Struther

She saw every personal religion as a pair of intersecting circles ... Probably perfection is reached when the area of the two outer crescents, added together, is exactly equal to that of the leaf-shaped piece in the middle. On paper there must be some neat mathematical formula for arriving at this; in life, none. — Jan Struther

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

Left wing ... Right wing ... it's so limited; why doesn't it ever occur to any of them that what one is really longing for is the wishbone? — Jan Struther

To achieve unity without uniformity is the whole essence of the democratic way of life. — Jan Struther

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

In childhood the daylight always fails too soon
except when there are going to be fireworks; — Jan Struther

It oughtn't to need a war to make us talk to each other in buses, and invent our own amusements in the evenings, and live simply, and eat sparingly, and recover the use of our legs, and get up early enough to see the sun rise. — Jan Struther

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

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

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

Mrs. Miniver suddenly understood why she was enjoying the forties so much better than she had enjoyed the thirties: it was the difference between August and October, between the heaviness of late summer and the sparkle of early autumn, between the ending of an old phase and the beginning of a fresh one. — Jan Struther

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

Punctuality is the thief of adventure ... — Jan Struther

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

One is what one remembers: no more, no less. — Jan Struther

Private opinion creates public opinion. Public opinion overflows eventually into national behavior as things are arranged at present, can make or mar the world. That is why private opinion, and private behavior, and private conversation are so terrifyingly important. — Jan Struther

Hard words will break no bones:
But more than bones are broken
By the inescapable stones
Of fond words left unspoken. — Jan Struther

To be put down in this world, and given only eighty years to get to know it in, is like being let loose in the United States of America for the first time with a high-powered car and unlimited gasoline - but with a visa that is valid for only a week. It's agonizing, that's what it is. — Jan Struther

[F]ireworks had for her a direct and magical appeal. Their attraction was more complex than that of any other form of art. They had pattern and sequence, colour and sound, brilliance and mobility; they had suspense, surprise, and a faint hint of danger; above all, they had the supreme quality of transience, which puts the keenest edge on beauty and makes it touch some spring in the heart which more enduring excellences cannot reach. — Jan Struther

A single person is a manageable entity, whom you can either make friends with or leave alone. But half of a married couple is not exactly a whole human being: if the marriage is successful it is something a little more than that; if unsuccessful, a little less. In either case, a fresh complication is added to the already intricate business of friendship: as Clem had once remarked, you might as well try to dance a tarantella with a Siamese twin. — Jan Struther

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. — Jan Struther

Not that she didn't enjoy the holidays: but she always felt - and it was, perhaps, the measure of her peculiar happiness - a little relieved when they were over. Her normal life pleased her so well that she was half afraid to step out of its frame in case one day she should find herself unable to get back. — Jan Struther