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One cannot overestimate the power of a good rancorous hatred on the part of the stupid. The stupid have so much more industry and energy to expend on hating. They build it up like coral insects.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

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Sylvia Townsend Warner
Age: 84 †
Born: 1893
Born: December 6
Died: 1978
Died: May 1
Linguist
Musicologist
Novelist
Poet
Translator
Writer
Harrow
Silvia Warner
Hate
Overestimate
Energy
Hating
Cannot
Insects
Part
Stupidity
Power
Hatred
Much
Build
Good
Industry
Expend
Like
Stupid
Coral

More quotes by Sylvia Townsend Warner

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London life was very full and exciting [...] But in London there would be no greenhouse with a glossy tank, and no apple-room, and no potting-shed, earthy and warm, with bunches of poppy heads hanging from the ceiling, and sunflower seeds in a wooden box, and bulbs in thick paper bags, and hanks of tarred string, and lavender drying on a tea-tray.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
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I do apologize for writing by hand - and so badly. I shall soon be like Helen Thomas, notoriously illegible. In her last letter only two words stood out plain: 'Blood pressure.' Subsequent research demonstrated that what she had actually written was 'Beloved friends.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
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When other helpers fail and comforts flee, when the senses decay and the mind moves in a narrower and narrower circle, when the grasshopper is a burden and the postman brings no letters, and even the Royal Family is no longer quite what it was, an obituary column stands fast.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
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In the morning I had decided that henceforth I only cared for easy loves. It is so degrading to have to persuade people into liking one, or one's works.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
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I realize that it is as one ages and loses one's natural force that one is at the mercy of heredity. The young are themselves: the aging, their parents' children.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
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For the last six weeks I have found myself pestered by some characters in search of an author.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
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[On an anarchist acquaintance:] Everything in appearance the most alarmist aunt could wish.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
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General de Gaulle is again pictured in our newspapers, looking as usual like an embattled codfish.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
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I wasn't educated. I was very lucky.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
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I wish you could see the two cats drowsing side by side in a Victorian nursing chair, their paws, their ears, their tails complementarily adjusted, their blue eyes blinking open on a single thought of when I shall remember it's their supper time. They might have been composed by Bach for two flutes.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
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no one wants to be praised for possibilities when one has submitted performances.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
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Young people are careless of their virginity one day they may have it and the next not.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
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Love amazes, but it does not surprise.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
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Of all damnable offenses preaching prudence to the young is the most damnable.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
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My grandmother was unsurpassable at sitting. She would sit on tombstones, glaciers, small hard benches with ants crawling over them, fragments of public monuments, other people's wheelbarrows, and when one returned one could be sure of finding her there, conversing affably with the owner of the wheelbarrow.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
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... possessiveness cannot accept it cannot even strike a fair bargain it has to confer.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
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I feel domesticity just slipping off me. It is a choice. Either one can let it go or one can intensify it. The people who intensify it seem to get quite a lot of interest out of that, too, and are as preoccupied as pirates.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
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Oh, I am all for singing. If I had had children I should have hounded them into choirs & choral societies, and if they weren't good enough for that, I would have sent them out, to sing in the streets.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
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Anticipation of pleasure is a pleasure in itself.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
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Only two things are real to me: my love and my death. In between them, I merely exist as a scatter of senses.
Sylvia Townsend Warner