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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.

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
Call
Contempt
Lateness
Others
Superior
Servile
Thing
Superiors
Punctual
Time
Illusion
Punctuality
Oneself
Serene
Necessary
Ensure
Late
Superiority
Respect
Showed

More quotes by Rose Macaulay

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When I have eaten mangoes, I have felt like Eve.
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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.
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If words are to change their meanings, as assuredly they are, let each user of language make such changes as please himself, put up his own suggestions, and let the best win.
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Life, for all its agonies...is exciting and beautiful, amusing and artful and endearing...and whatever is to come after it -- we shall not have this life again.
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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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Life is one long struggle to disinter oneself, to keep one's head above the accumulations, the ever deepening layers of objects ... which attempt to cover one over, steadily, almost irresistibly, like falling snow.
Rose Macaulay
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Each wrong act brings with it its own anesthetic, dulling the conscience and blinding it against further light, and sometimes for years.
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.
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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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Atheism was natural enough, but heresy seemed strange. For, surely, if one could believe anything, one could believe everything.
Rose Macaulay
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Adultery is a meanness and a stealing, a taking away from someone what should be theirs, a great selfishness, and surrounded and guarded by lies lest it should be found out. And out of meanness and selfishness and lying flow love and joy and peace beyond anything that can be imagined.
Rose Macaulay
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Many persons read and like fiction. It does not tax the intelligence and the intelligence of most of us can so ill afford taxation that we rightly welcome any reading matter which avoids this.
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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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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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.
Rose Macaulay
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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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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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Love's a disease. But curable.
Rose Macaulay
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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.
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