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The very utterness of the crash and ruin, the desperation of the case, might be its hope. On ruins one can begin to build. Anyhow, looking out from ruins one clearly sees there are no obstructing walls.

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
Looking
Sees
Hope
Clearly
Obstructing
Might
Case
Anyhow
Build
Desperation
Begin
Ruin
Wall
Crash
Cases
Walls
Challenges
Ruins

More quotes by Rose Macaulay

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It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.
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The manuscript may go forth from the writer to return with a faithfulness passing the faithfulness of the boomerang or the homing pigeon.
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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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Words, living and ghostly, the quick and the dead, crowd and jostle the otherwise too empty corridors of my mind ... To move among this bright, strange, often fabulous herd of beings, to summon them at my will, to fasten them on to paper like flies, that they may decorate it, this is the pleasure of writing.
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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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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
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To lunch with the important ... that should be the daily goal of those for whom life is not a playground but a ladder.
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One could do with a longer year - so much to do, so little done, alas.
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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.
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Age has extremely little to do with anything that matters. The difference between one age and another is, as a rule, enormously exaggerated.
Rose Macaulay
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So they left the subject and played croquet, which is a very good game for people who are annoyed with one another, giving many opportunities for venting rancor.
Rose Macaulay
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Parents are untamed, excessive, potentially troublesome creatures charming to be with for a time, in the main they must lead their own lives, independent and self-employed, with companions of their own age and selection.
Rose Macaulay
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Never approach a friend's wife or girlfriend with mischief as your goal... unless she's really attractive.
Rose Macaulay
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When I have eaten mangoes, I have felt like Eve.
Rose Macaulay
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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?
Rose Macaulay
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Traveling together is a great test, which has damaged many friendships and even honeymoons, and some people such as [Thomas] Gray and Horace Walpole, never feel quite the same to one another again, and it is nobody's fault, as one knows if one listens to the stories of both, though it seems to be some people's fault more than others.
Rose Macaulay
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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.
Rose Macaulay
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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.
Rose Macaulay
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Human passions against eternal laws -- that is the everlasting conflict.
Rose Macaulay
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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.
Rose Macaulay