Sylvia Townsend Warner Quotes

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To think of losing is to lose already.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Thinking, Losing, Loses

Sylvia Townsend Warner, William Maxwell (1982). “Letters”

46 Copy quote
It is best as one grows older to strip oneself of possessions, to shed oneself downward like a tree, to be almost wholly earth before one dies.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Tree, Earth, Possession

Sylvia Townsend Warner (1978). “Lolly Willowes: or, The loving huntsman”, Charles River Books

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The fatal flaw of gravity; when you are down, everything falls down on you.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Fall, Flaws, Gravity

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When I die, I hope to think I have annoyed a great many people.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Thinking, People, Annoyed

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Claire Harman (1994). “The diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner”, Virago Pr

9 Copy quote
There are not enough poems in praise of bed.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Bed, Praise, Enough

Sylvia Townsend Warner, William Maxwell (1982). “Letters”

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Truth has beauty, power, and necessity.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Truth

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Total grief is like a minefield. No knowing when one will touch the tripwire.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Love, Grief, Knowing

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Claire Harman (1994). “The diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner”, Virago Pr

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Slowly, with a look of intense concentration, he got up and advanced on me ... put out a front paw, and stroked my cheek as I used to stoke his chops. A human caress from a cat. I felt very meagre and ill-educated that I could not purr.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Cat, Looks, Paws

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Nine people out of ten (in Germany and England, perhaps ten people) would rather wait for their rights than fight for their rights.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Change, Fighting, Rights

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There is a period in one's life - perhaps not longer than six months - when one lives in two worlds at once ... It is the time when one has freshly learned to read. The Word, till then a denominating aspect of the Thing, has suddenly become detached from it and is perceived as a glittering entity, transparent and unseizable as a jellyfish, yet able to create an independent world that is both more recondite and more instantaneously convincing than the world one knew before.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Reading, Independent, Two

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

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Youth, Young, Caution

6 Copy quote
Happy is the day whose history is not written down.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Written

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Claire Harman (1994). “The diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner”, Virago Pr

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Anticipation of pleasure is a pleasure in itself.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Expectations, Anticipation, Pleasure

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One cannot overestimate the power of a good rancorous hatred on the part of the stupid. The stupid have so much more industry and energy to expend on hating. They build it up like coral insects.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Hate, Stupid, Hatred

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Claire Harman (1994). “The diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner”, Virago Pr

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There are some women in whom conscience is so strongly developed that it leaves little room for anything else. Love is scarcely felt before duty rushes to encase it, anger impossible because one must always be calm and see both sides, pity evaporates in expedients, even grief is felt as a sort of bruised sense of injury, a resentment that one should have grief forced upon one when one has always acted for the best.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Grief, Love Is, Should Have

Sylvia Townsend Warner (2011). “Selected Stories”, p.246, Hachette UK

6 Copy quote
You are only young once. At the time it seems endless, and is gone in a flash; and then for a very long time you are old.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Long, Gone, Flash

Sylvia Townsend Warner (1966). “Swans on an Autumn River: Stories”

6 Copy quote
once, when I was a young lady and on a night express ... I was awakened by a man coming in from the corridor and taking hold of my leg ... Quite as much to my own astonishment as his, I uttered the most appalling growl that ever came out of a tigress. He fled, poor man, without a word: and I lay there, trembling slightly, not at my escape but at my potentialities.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Confidence, Night, Men

12 Copy quote
Happiness is an immunity.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Happiness, Immunity

Sylvia Townsend Warner (1988). “Selected stories of Sylvia Townsend Warner”, Vintage

8 Copy quote
noise is a pollution.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Noise, Pollution

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Claire Harman (1994). “The diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner”, Virago Pr

5 Copy quote
Love is the only real patriation, and without one's dear one sits in a dreary and boring exile.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Real, Love Is, Dear Ones

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Valentine Ackland, Susanna Pinney (1998). “I'll stand by you: selected letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland : with narrative by Sylvia Townsend Warner”, Random House (UK)

8 Copy quote
Idleness is righteous if it is comfortable. Uncomfortable idleness is sin & sinful waste.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Leisure, Waste, Sin

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Claire Harman (1994). “The diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner”, Virago Pr

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I wish you could see the two cats drowsing side by side in a Victorian nursing chair, their paws, their ears, their tails complementarily adjusted, their blue eyes blinking open on a single thought of when I shall remember it's their supper time. They might have been composed by Bach for two flutes.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Cat, Eye, Nursing

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[John Craske] painted like a man giving witness under oath to a wild story.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Artist, Men, Giving

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I wasn't educated. I was very lucky.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Lucky, Educated

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Claire Harman (1982). “Collected poems”, Carcanet New Press ; New York : Viking Press

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Only two things are real to me: my love and my death. In between them, I merely exist as a scatter of senses.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Real, Two, Two Things

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Claire Harman (1994). “The diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner”, Virago Pr

8 Copy quote

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Born: December 6, 1893
Died: May 1, 1978
Occupation: Novelist
Cite this Page: Citation

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