Winifred 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

Every woman must admit, and every man with as much sense as a woman, that it's very hard to make a home for any man if he's always in it. — Winifred Kirkland

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

Dane lived above a greengrocer's shop at 26 Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, with her secretary, Olwen Bowen, herself a writer of children's books, but who now devoted herself to the care of her companion. 'One climbed up a rickety staircase and there was Winifred, surrounded by her paintings, sculptures, a piano and goodness knows how many books, where she would give many after-the-theatre parties . . . — Philip Hoare

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

He should marry her, - or there should be something done which should make the name of Winifred Hurtle known to the world! She had no plan of revenge yet formed. She would not talk of revenge, - she told herself that she would not even think of revenge till she was quite sure that revenge would be necessary. But she did think of it, and could not keep her thoughts from it for a moment. Could it be possible that she, with all her intellectual gifts as well as those of her outward person, should be thrown over by a man whom well as she loved him, - and she did love him with all her heart, - she regarded as greatly inferior to herself! He had promised to marry her; and he should marry her, or the world should hear the story of his perjury! — Anthony Trollope

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

Living the focused life is not about trying to feel happy all the time ... rather, it's about treating your mind as you would a private garden and being as careful as possible about what you introduce and allow to grow there. — Winifred Gallagher

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

Recently, the search for what he calls "the splinters that make up different attention problems" has taken Castellanos in a new direction. First, he explains that your brain is far less concerned with your brilliant ideas or searing emotions than with its own internal "gyroscopic busyness," which consumes 65 percent of its total energy. Every fifty seconds, its activity fluctuates, causing what he calls a "brownout." No one knows the purpose of these neurological events, but Castellanos has a thesis: the clockwork pulses enable the brain's circuits to stay "logged on" and available to communicate with one another, even when they're not being used. "Imagine you're a cabdriver on your day off," Castellanos says. "You don't need to use your workday circuits on a Sunday, but to keep those channels open, your brain sends a ping through them every minute or so. The fluctuations are the brain's investment in maintaining its circuits online. — Winifred Gallagher

Research shows that when they confront a potentially unpleasant situation, such as some unfriendly faces at a gathering, these extraverts are apt to shift their attention rapidly around the room and zero in on amiable or neutral visages, thus short-circuiting the distressing images before they can get stored in memory. — Winifred Gallagher

People who are diagnosed as having "generalized anxiety disorder" are afflicted by three major problems that many of us experience to a lesser extent from time to time. First and foremost, says Rapgay, the natural human inclination to focus on threats and bad news is strongly amplified in them, so that even significant positive events get suppressed. An inflexible mentality and tendency toward excessive verbalizing make therapeutic intervention a further challenge. — Winifred Gallagher

If you really want to focus on something, says Castellanos, the optimum amount of time to spend on it is ninety minutes. Then change tasks. And watch out for interruptions once you're really concentrating, because it will take you twenty minutes to recover. — Winifred Gallagher

That God once loved a garden we learn in Holy writ.
And seeing gardens in the Spring I well can credit it. — Winifred Mary Letts

Looking at Winifred there, so confident and contained in the sunlight, she thinks that perhaps this is the secret to Winifred's happiness; that she can pack each thing into its proper pace, she can retain boundaries at each point of contact, can go on learning and growing, without losing herself in pursuit of a grander dream. — Natasha Walter

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

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

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

All these years she had never had the wicked thrill of powdering her nose. Others had experienced that joy. Never she. And all because she lacked courage. — Winifred Watson

Because you actually might not know what activities truly engage your attention and satisfy you, he says, it can be helpful to keep a diary of what you do all day and how you feel while doing it. Then, try to do more of what's rewarding, even if it takes an effort, and less of what isn't. Where optimal experience is concerned, he says, 'I just don't have the time' often means 'I just don't have the self-discipline. — Winifred Gallagher

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

However, by Sunday noon
not coincidentally, the unhappiest hour in America
you may have run through your options and wind up slumped on a couch, suffering from the Sabbath existential crisis. It's at just such unfocused, unproductive times, says Csikszentmihalyi, that people start ruminating and feeling that their lives are wasted and so forth. — Winifred Gallagher

Then the Alumni Association man cleared his throat and gave out with a pious spiel about Winifred Griffen Prior, saint on earth. How everyone fibs when it's a question of money! I suppose the old bitch pictured the whole thing when she made her bequest, stingy as it is. She knew my presence would be requested; she wanted me writhing in the town's harsh gaze while her own munificence was lauded. — Margaret Atwood

The psychology of silk underclothes has not yet been fully considered, mused Miss Pettigrew happily. — Winifred Watson

By the age of twenty the distinctly Branwellian qualities would be developed from which he would never again shake himself free. — Winifred Gerin

In a variation on James's recipe for interesting experience
the familiar leavened by the novel
Hobbs's "art of choosing difficulties" requires selecting projects that are "just manageable." If an activity is too easy, you lose focus and get bored. If it's too hard, you become anxious, overwhelmed, and unable to concentrate. Tellingly, one group is distinguished by its zeal for the kind of work that requires you to give it all you've got: high achievers particularly relish taking on risky projects that have only a 50/50 chance of success. — Winifred Gallagher

Over time, a commitment to challenging, focused work and leisure produces not only better daily experience, but also a more complex, interesting person: the long-range benefit of the focused life. As Hobbs put it, the secret of fulfillment is to choose trouble for oneself in the direction of what one would like to become. — Winifred Gallagher

Grady knew no one she thought less attractive than Mink, or more preposterous than Winifred: yet together and around them they made a clear, lovely, light: it was as if, out of their ordinary stone, their massive unshaped selves, something precious had been set free, a figure musical and pure: she could not but pay it homage. — Truman Capote

Ready for the countdown,' shouted Winifred.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Lift off !
And the sleigh budged. Quite a bit. — Margaret Harcourt West

I saw the spires of Oxford As I was passing by, The gray spires of Oxford Against a pearl-gray sky. My heart was with the Oxford men Who went abroad to die. — Winifred Mary Letts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where visual artists are concerned, the Baroque sculptor and architect Bernini and the painter and sculptor Picasso were clearly adept at both experiential and instrumental attending, says Tellegen, as is the modern architect Frank Gehry. Choosing a literary example, he says that F. Scott Fitzgerald once admitted to "wrapping one of his romantic flings in cellophane" for later artistic use and notes that "this kind of heartless but honest professionalism is not uncommon among creative people. — Winifred Gallagher

This observation leads Rozin to a stunning conclusion: Disgust is the basic emotion of civilization. — Winifred Gallagher

Arguably the mos intriguing characteristic assessed by the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ), a widely used test developed by the University of Minnesota's eminent psychologist Auke Tellegen, is "absorption," which describes a particular style of focusing. If you get a high score in this trait, you're naturally inclined toward what he calls a "respondent" or "experiential" way of focusing. — Winifred Gallagher

All the men send you orchids because they're expensive and they know that you know they are. But I always kind of think they're cheap, don't you, just because they're expensive. Like telling someone how much you paid for something to show off. — Winifred Watson

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

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

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

No, what Great Aunt Winifred was suffering from was the persecution every happily single woman suffers: the predictable social condemnation of her independence and childlessness. Dorothy reminded herself of what she'd learned during a university course on feminist history (with a strong Marxist slant): spinsters are a threat to patriarchy. — Tobsha Learner

In Jack Nasar's research on American's taste in homes, only one group preferred the modernist house: architects. — Winifred Gallagher

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

Julian Malory was about forty, a few years younger than his sister. Both were tall, thin and angular, but while this gave to Julian a suitable ascetic distinction, it only seemed to make Winifred, with her eager face and untidy grey hair, more awkward and gaunt. She was dressed, as usual, in an odd assortment of clothes, most of which had belonged to other people. — Barbara Pym

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

Yet he argued that even a tedious topic can take on a certain fascination if you make an effort to look at it afresh: The subject must be made to show new aspects of itself; to prompt new questions; in a word, to change. From an unchanging subject the attention inevitably wanders away. — Winifred Gallagher

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

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

WINIFRED - WHO, IT SEEMED, HAD BEEN LISTENING AT THE DOOR - handed her a pair of shoes as soon as Etta emerged from the office. By the time Henry appeared at her side, a light coat over his suit jacket, the woman had faded back down the shadows of the hallway like the ghoul she was.
"No coat?" he asked, eyeing her up and down.
"Darling Winifred didn't think I needed one, apparently," she said. One of the guards chuckled into his fist, earning him a swat across the chest from the other.
Henry looked mildly startled. "Your mother called her that as well."
"My mother met that woman and they both survived it?"
One corner of his mouth twitched, and the parts of her that were still raw, and awkward - and, worse - unsure, eased. "I never said they emerged unscathed. — Alexandra Bracken

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

Today the greatest single deterrent to knowledge of Jesus is His familiarity. Because we think we know Him, we pass Him by. — Winifred Kirkland

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

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

It's elementary, my dear Winifred. — Miss Mae

Once out of your cradle, you don't focus on the world in the abstract, perceiving things for the first time, but in synchrony with your accumulated knowledge, which enriches and helps define your experience, as well as ensuring its uniqueness. — Winifred Gallagher

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

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

You've gone all red. It's cooking over a hot stove. That's why I've never cultivated the art. It simply ruins the complexion. I'm terribly sorry."
"It's all right," said miss Pettigrew with resignation. "I've reached the age when ... when complexions don't matter."
"Not matter!" said miss LaFosse, shocked. "Complexions always matter. — Winifred Watson

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

Temperamentally anxious people can have a hard time staying motivated, period, because their intense focus on their worries distracts them from their goals. — Winifred Gallagher

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

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

Debriefing-style counseling after a trauma often aggravates a victim's stress-related symptoms, for example, and 4 in 10 bereaved people do better without grief therapy. — Winifred Gallagher

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

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

Odd, said Miss Pettigrew conversationally, 'the undermining effect of flowers on a woman's common sense. — Winifred Watson

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

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

Whenever you squander attention on something that doesn't put your brain through its paces and stimulate change, your mind stagnates a little and life feels dull. — Winifred Gallagher

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

Really," said Winifred suddenly; "it almost seems like Fate. Only that's so old-fashioned. — John Galsworthy

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

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

To her all books were the same and, as with her subjects, she felt a duty to approach them without prejudice ... Lauren Bacall, Winifred Holtby, Sylvia Plath - who were they? Only be reading could she find out. — Alan Bennett

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

Among these temperamentally unhappy campers are "reactant" personalities, who focus on what they often wrongly perceive as others' attempts to control them. In one experiment, some of these touchy individuals were asked to think of two people they knew: a bossy sort who advocated hard work and a mellow type who preached la dolce vita. Then, one of the names was flashed before the subjects too briefly to register in their conscious awareness. Next, the subjects were given a task to perform. Those who had been exposed to the hard-driving name performed markedly worse than those exposed to the easygoing name. Even this weak, subliminal attention to an emotional cue that suggested control was enough to get their reactant backs up and cause them to act to their own disadvantage. All relationships involve give-and-take and cooperation, so a person who habitually attends to ordinary requests or suggestions like a bull to a red flag is in for big trouble in both home and workplace. — Winifred Gallagher

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

Consciousness, which is the "reflective" element of Norman's conceptual brain, handles the "higher" functions at the metaphorical tip of the very top of that complicated organ. Because consciousness pays a lot of attention to your thoughts, you tend to identify it with cognition. However, if you try to figure out exactly how you run your business or care for your family, you soon realize that you can't grasp that process just by thinking about it. As Norman puts it, "Consciousness also has a qualitative, sensory feel. If I say, 'I'm afraid,' it's not just my mind talking. My stomach also knots up. — Winifred Gallagher

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