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Jan Struther Quotes - Page 2

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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

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
Life, Time, Years
Jan Struther (1946). “A Pocket Full of Pebbles”

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

Jan Struther
Weapons, Oblivion, Mood
Jan Struther (1940). “Mrs. Miniver”

swans ... always look as though they'd just been reading their own fan-mail.

Jan Struther
Reading, Swans, Fans

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
Opportunity, Employment, World
Jan Struther (1942). “Mrs. Miniver”, p.79, Prabhat Prakashan

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

Jan Struther
Simple, Simple Words
Jan Struther, “London Lovers”

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
Family, Believe, Successful
Jan Struther (1956). “A pocketful of pebbles”

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
Stars, Lakes, Air

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
Order, Speech, Scarcity

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
Rain, Weather, Race
Jan Struther (1956). “A pocketful of pebbles”

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
Women, Circles, Two

And I am a mockery, who was God before.

Jan Struther
Mockery
Jan Struther, “Age”

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