Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes - Page 3

One doesn’t become a witch to run around being helpful either…. It’s to escape all that – to have a life of one’s own, not an existence doled out to you by others, charitable refuse of their thoughts, so many ounces of stale bread of life a day.

Spring is strictly sentimental, self-regarding; but I burn more careless in the autumn bonfire.

about ten days ago I got started on a new book, and am completely, brazenly devoted to it: my hair is uncut, my letters are unwritten, the house is a shambles, and I sit here as happy as Mrs. Jellaby, though I am in 1836, not Africa. It won't go on like this, I shall fall over some obstacle, and wake out of my dreams with a black eye and broken shins: but while it does last, I daren't interrupt it. I haven't had such a spell of writing for nearly three years.

There are some women ... in whom conscience is so strongly developed that it leaves little room for anything else.

Belligerents always abolish war after a war.

when the German propaganda tries to be winsome it is like a clown with homicidal mania - ludicrous and terrifying both at once.

General de Gaulle is again pictured in our newspapers, looking as usual like an embattled codfish.

[On an anarchist acquaintance:] Everything in appearance the most alarmist aunt could wish.

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.

The body, after all, older and wiser than soul, being first created, and, like a good horse, if given its way would go home by the best path and at the right pace.

Of all damnable offenses preaching prudence to the young is the most damnable.

Children driven good are apt to be driven mad.

I realize that it is as one ages and loses one's natural force that one is at the mercy of heredity. The young are themselves: the aging, their parents' children.

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.

Love amazes, but it does not surprise.

Rouen shone in dark sunlight and a storm swept it away from my eyes and churned up the broad river with waves which pounced up like cats as our train drew out of the arches of the bridge.

Inflation is the senility of democracies.

The baby romped on my lap like a short stout salmon.

Elizabeth ... had the prerogative of the rich that she could be generous with large sums and niggardly over small ones.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Reason is a poor hand at prophecies.

All encounters with children are touched with social embarrassment.