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

More quotes by Rose Macaulay

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Cruelty was the devil, and most people were, in one way or another, cruel. Tyranny, suppression, persecution, torture, slavery, war, neglect - all were cruel. The world was acid and sour with hate, fat with greed, yellow with the triumph of the strong and the rich.
Rose Macaulay
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what about Christianity? Are we right in the face of so long a record of its poverty in international achievement, to keep invoking it as a standard, almost synonymous with civilization?
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
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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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At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.
Rose Macaulay
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Human passions against eternal laws -- that is the everlasting conflict.
Rose Macaulay
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It is to the eccentrics that the world owes most of its knowledge.
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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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.
Rose Macaulay
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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.
Rose Macaulay
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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.
Rose Macaulay
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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.
Rose Macaulay
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To be prejudiced is the privilege of the thinking human being. ... The open mind is the empty mind.
Rose Macaulay
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Love's a disease. But curable.
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.
Rose Macaulay
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One could do with a longer year - so much to do, so little done, alas.
Rose Macaulay
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Decades have a delusive edge to them. They are not, of course, really periods at all, except as any other ten years may be. But we, looking at them, are caught by the different name each bears, and give them different attributes, and tie labels on them, as if they were flowers in a border.
Rose Macaulay
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The impulse to ask questions is among the more primitive human lusts.
Rose Macaulay
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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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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.
Rose Macaulay