Winifred Holtby Quotes

Quotes about:

• The things that one most wants to do are the things that are probably most worth doing.

  Winifred Holtby

  Dream, Want

  Winifred Holtby (1937). “Letters to a friend”

  48 Copy quote

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

  Winifred Holtby

  Life, Understanding, Crowns

  Winifred Holtby (2007). “Virginia Woolf: A Critical Memoir”, Bloomsbury Academic

  24 Copy quote

• 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

  Hands, Law, Reform

  19 Copy quote

• Question everyone in authority, and see that you get sensible answers to your questions ... questioning does not mean the end of loving, and loving does not mean the abnegation of intelligence. Vow as much love to your country as you like ... but, I implore you, do not forget to question.

  Winifred Holtby

  Country, Mean, Patriotism

  13 Copy quote

• 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

  Sleep, Thinking, Imagination

  Winifred Holtby, Vera Brittain (1960). “Selected letters of Winifred Holtby and Vera Brittain, 1920-1935”

  15 Copy quote

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

  Winifred Holtby

  Giving, Needs, Give And Take

  Winifred Holtby (1936). “South Riding”

  7 Copy quote

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

  Winifred Holtby

  Sorry, Regret, Feels

  5 Copy quote

• There's never been a lack of men willing to die bravely. The trouble is to find a few able to live sensibly.

  Winifred Holtby

  Peace, Men, Able

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Humor, Needs, Sides

  Winifred Holtby (2011). “Mandoa, Mandoa!: A Comedy of Irrelevance”, p.190, Hachette UK

  12 Copy quote

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

  Winifred Holtby

  Men, Tree, Important

  Winifred Holtby, Alice Holtby (1941). “Letters to a friend”

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Animal, Names, Dumb

  13 Copy quote

• 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

  Stars, Distance, Light

  Winifred Holtby (2011). “Mandoa, Mandoa!: A Comedy of Irrelevance”, p.193, Hachette UK

  11 Copy quote

• When a person that one loves is in the world and alive and well, and pleased to be in the world, then to miss them is only a new flavor, a salt sharpness in experience. It is when the beloved is unhappy or maimed or troubled that one misses with pain.

  Winifred Holtby

  Pain, Love Is, Missing

  Winifred Holtby, Vera Brittain (1960). “Selected letters of Winifred Holtby and Vera Brittain, 1920-1935”

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  People, Mind, Body

  Winifred Holtby, Alice Holtby (1941). “Letters to a friend”

  11 Copy quote

• no truth is strong enough to defeat a well-established legend.

  Winifred Holtby

  Strong, Legends, Defeat

  Winifred Holtby (1937). “Pavements at Anderby: tales of "South riding" and other regions by Winifred Holtby”

  8 Copy quote

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

  Winifred Holtby

  Time, Enemy, Betray

  Winifred Holtby (2011). “South Riding”, p.164, Random House

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Fate, Men, Life And Death

  7 Copy quote

• Everybody's tragedy is somebody's nuisance.

  Winifred Holtby

  Tragedy, Nuisance

  4 Copy quote

• But questioning does not mean the end of loving, and loving does not mean the abnegation of intelligence

  Winifred Holtby

  Mean, Doe, Ends

  Winifred Holtby (2011). “South Riding”, p.524, Random House

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Adventure, Balance, World

  Winifred Holtby (2011). “South Riding”, p.455, Hachette UK

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Happiness, Frustration, Reality

  Winifred Holtby (1937). “Pavements at Anderby: tales of "South riding" and other regions by Winifred Holtby”

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Happiness, Thinking, What Matters

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Congratulations, Race, Ignorant

  Winifred Holtby (1937). “Pavements at Anderby: tales of "South riding" and other regions by Winifred Holtby”

  5 Copy quote

• it is the brevity of life which makes it tolerable; its experiences have value because they have an end.

  Winifred Holtby

  Ends, Brevity Of Life, Tolerable

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Animal, Roots, Body

  Winifred Holtby, Alice Holtby (1941). “Letters to a friend”

  6 Copy quote

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