Quote

Cranks live by theory, not by pure desire. They want votes, peace, nuts, liberty, and spinning-looms not because they love these things, as a child loves jam, but because they think they ought to have them. That is one element which makes the crank.

Rose Macaulay

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Rose Macaulay
Age: 77 †
Born: 1881
Born: April 1
Died: 1958
Died: October 30
Author
Novelist
Writer
Rugby
Warwickshire
Emilie Rose Macaulay
Dame Emilie Rose Macaulay
Live
Pure
Votes
Children
Theory
Eccentric
Things
Ought
Spinning
Love
Liberty
Nuts
Cranks
Think
Child
Element
Looms
Thinking
Peace
Loves
Eccentricity
Desire
Vote
Crank
Makes
Elements
Jam

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Work is a dull thing you cannot get away from that. The only agreeable existence is one of idleness, and that is not, unfortunately, always compatible with continuing to exist at all.
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The superior thing ... was to be late. Lateness showed that serene contempt for the illusion we call time which is so necessary to ensure the respect of others and oneself. Only the servile are punctual.
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Did you ever look through a microscope at a drop of pond water? You see plenty of love there. All the amoebae getting married. I presume they think it very exciting and important. We don't.
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To be prejudiced is the privilege of the thinking human being. ... The open mind is the empty mind.
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I can think of few things more disastrous than starting a new correspondence with any one. Letters are a burden indeed ... they seem often the last straw that breaks the back ... you should see the piles of those that I must answer that litter and weight my writing table.
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As to the family, I have never understood how that fits in with the other ideals -- or, indeed, why it should be an ideal at all.
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Another sad comestive truth is that the best foods are the products of infinite and wearying trouble. The trouble need not be taken by the consumer, but someone, ever since the Fall, has had to take it.
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It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.
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Here is one of the points about this planet which should be remembered into every penetrable corner of it, and into most of the impenetrable corners, the English will penetrate. They are like that born invaders. They cannot stay at home.
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When I have eaten mangoes, I have felt like Eve.
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The poet has to make a synthesis out of the moral life of our time, and this life is lived at this moment on a political plane.
Rose Macaulay
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Atheism was natural enough, but heresy seemed strange. For, surely, if one could believe anything, one could believe everything.
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A hot bath! How exquisite a vespertine pleasure, how luxurious, fervid and flagrant a consolation for the rigours, the austerities, the renunciations of the day.
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Women have one great advantage over men. It is commonly thought that if they marry they have done enough, and need career no further. If a man marries, on the other hand, public opinion is all against him if he takes this view.
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Sleeping in a bed -- it is, apparently, of immense importance. Against those who sleep, from choice or necessity, elsewhere society feels righteously hostile. It is not done. It is disorderly, anarchical.
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As to the family, I have never understood how that fits in with the other ideals --or, indeed, why it should be an ideal at all. A group of closely related persons living under one roof it is a convenience, often a necessity, sometimes a pleasure, sometimes the reverse but who first exalted it as admirable, an almost religious ideal?
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Mozart is everyone's tea, pleasing to highbrows, middlebrows and lowbrows alike, though they probably all get different kinds of pleasure from him.
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Words move, turning over like tumbling clowns like certain books and like fleas, they possess activity. All men equally have the right to say, 'This word shall bear this meaning,' and see if they can get it across. It is a sporting game, which all can play, only all cannot win.
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It is to the eccentrics that the world owes most of its knowledge.
Rose Macaulay
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Still I sojourn here, alone and palely loitering, though the sedge is withered from the lake and no birds sing. For I sent the bath towel to the wash this morning, and omitted to put out another. I have no towel.
Rose Macaulay