Winifred Holtby Quotes & Sayings

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. — Winifred Holtby

Everybody's tragedy is somebody's nuisance. — Winifred Holtby

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. — Winifred Holtby

To choose, to take, with clear judgement and open eyes; to count the cost and pay it; to regret nothing; to go forward, cutting losses, refusing to complain, accepting complete responsibility for their own decisions - this was the code which she attempted to impress upon the children who came under her influence - the code on which she set herself to act. — Winifred Holtby

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

Do. Do? Oh, you never do anything except the things I tell you. You're always wringing your hands and looking sorry, but I always have to think of the things to do . — Winifred Holtby

I am a feminist because I dislike everything that feminism implies. I desire an end to the whole business, the demands for equality, the suggestion of sex warfare, the very name feminist. I want to be about the work in which my real interests like, the writing of novels and so forth. But while inequality exists, while injustice is done and opportunity denied to the great majority of women, I shall have to be a feminist. And I shan't be happy till I get ... a society in which there is no distinction of persons either male or female, but a supreme regard for the importance of the human being. And when that dream is a reality, I will say farewell to feminism, as to any disbanded but victorious army, with honour for its heroes, gratitude for its sacrifice, and profound relief that the hour for its necessity has passed. — Winifred Holtby

Sorrow and frustration have their power. The world is moved by people with great discontents. Happiness is a drug. It can make men blind and deaf and insensible to reality. There are times when only sorrow can give to sorrow. — Winifred Holtby

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

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. — Winifred Holtby

Why, why, when one writes, does a sort of shackle bind one's imagination? I become conscious of a deadening mediocrity, perhaps a form of mental cowardice, and I long to break free, to let my imagination take wings. It doesn't - yet ... — Winifred Holtby

Their language was an old wild language. They had known incredible loves and dark adventures and the twisted streets of alien cities. They had known the green breaking waves of the sea, and the green aisles of the silent forests. They had known war and death and fierce, cruel elation. — Winifred Holtby

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 ... — Winifred Holtby

Lydia delighted her. The girl's roughness, her ability, her exuberance, were qualities desired by Sarah for her children. You could make something out of a girl like that. She had power. — Winifred Holtby

Youth knows no remedy for grief but death. — Winifred Holtby

Most gay, conversational, careless, lovely city ... where one drinks golden Tokay until one feels most beautiful, and warm and loved - oh, Budapesth! — Winifred Holtby

No truth is strong enough to defeat a well-established legend. — Winifred Holtby

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. — Winifred Holtby

We are so little, so ignorant, so feeble an infant race crawling on a planet between immensities we haven't even begun to understand, that really we have no grounds for either congratulation or despair. — Winifred Holtby

And not there, not there, not there,
Your laughing face and your wind-blown hair
Leave not even a ghost in the garden. — Winifred Holtby

Why haven't we seventy lives? One is no use. — Winifred Holtby

Those who prepare for war get it. — Winifred Holtby

You are quite, quite wrong if you think that ... I find your happiness painful. What matters is that happiness - the golden day - should exist in the world, not much to whom it comes. For all of us it is so transitory a thing, how could one not draw joy from its arrival? — Winifred Holtby

I can't think why I was cursed with this inordinate desire to write, if the high gods weren't going to give me some more adquate means of expressing myself than that which my present pedestrian prose affords. — Winifred Holtby

The things that one most wants to do are the things that are probably most worth doing — Winifred Holtby

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. — Winifred Holtby

Public work brings a vicarious but assured sense of immortality. We may be poor, weak, timid, in debt to our landlady, bullied by our nieces, stiff in the joints, shortsighted and distressed; we shall perish, but the cause endures; the cause is great. — Winifred Holtby

I was born to be a spinster, and, by God, I'm going to spin. — Winifred Holtby

Go therefore, and do that which is within you to do. Take no heed of gestures that beckon you aside. Ask of no man permission to perform. — Winifred Holtby

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. — Winifred Holtby

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

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 ... — Winifred Holtby

I am fierce for work. Without work I am nothing. — Winifred Holtby

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. — Winifred Holtby

These are they whose youth was violently severed by war and death; a word on the telephone, a scribbled line on paper, and their future ceased. They have built up their lives again, but their safety is not absolute, their fortress not impregnable. — Winifred Holtby

Clever? who said that we all had to be clever? But we have to have courage. The whole position of women is what it is to-day, because so many of us have followed the line of least resistance, and have sat down placidly in a little provincial town, waiting to get married. No wonder that the men have thought that this is all that we are good for. — Winifred Holtby

Oh, lovely world,' thought Sarah, in love with life and all its varied richness. — Winifred Holtby

The more I see of dogs, the more I like children. — Winifred Holtby

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

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

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

We're so busy resigning ourselves to the inevitable that we don't even ask if it is inevitable. We've got to have courage, to take our future into our hands. If the law is oppressive, we must change the law. If tradition is obstructive, we must break tradition. If the system is unjust, we must reform the system. — Winifred Holtby

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

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. — Winifred Holtby

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 ... — Winifred Holtby

Oh, time betrays us. Time is the great enemy ... — Winifred Holtby

HIs slower mind could not keep pace with her swift reactions; his emotions, not easily aroused, were still less easily subdued. Always he felt himself left far behind her, dull, clumsy, insensitive, too fond, too gross, too awkward. — Winifred Holtby

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. — Winifred Holtby

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. — Winifred Holtby

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. — Winifred Holtby

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. — Winifred Holtby

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

I find you in all small and lovely things; in the little fishes like flames in the green water, in the furred and stupid softness of bumble-bees fat as laughter, in all the chiming radiance of warmth and light and scent in the summer garden. — Winifred Holtby

It is better to take experience, to suffer, to love, and to remember than to walk unscathed between the fires. I've had most immunities myself - the result of an independent income combined with a personality completely devoid of sexual attractions - the two fires of poverty and passion have therefore never burned me, and I am a lesser person for my safety. — Winifred Holtby

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

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

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

I would, if I could, always feed to music. The singularly graceless action of thus filling one's body with roots and dead animals and powdered grain is given some significance then. One can perform as a ritual what one is shamed to do as a utilitarian action ... — Winifred Holtby

Look here,' she began, 'you can't go on like that, you know. If you are really keen on a thing, and it's a good thing, you ought to go and do it. It is no use waiting till people tell you that you may go. Asking permission is a coward's way of shifting responsibility on to some one else. — Winifred Holtby

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. — Winifred Holtby

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