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when the German propaganda tries to be winsome it is like a clown with homicidal mania - ludicrous and terrifying both at once.
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
Tries
German
Propaganda
Winsome
War
Homicidal
Trying
Ludicrous
Like
Mania
World
Terrifying
Clown
More quotes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
[On an anarchist acquaintance:] Everything in appearance the most alarmist aunt could wish.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
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
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
... possessiveness cannot accept it cannot even strike a fair bargain it has to confer.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Here is a kitchen improvement, in return for Peacock. For roasting or basting a chicken, render down your fat or butter with cider: about a third cider. Let it come together slowly, till the smell of cider and the smell of fat are as one. This will enliven even a frozen chicken.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
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
cooking is the most succulent of human pleasures.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Young people are careless of their virginity one day they may have it and the next not.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
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
There is a moral, of course, and like all morals it is better not pursued.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
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
Reason is a poor hand at prophecies.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
One reason why my memory decays is that I have three cats, all so loving and insistent that they play cat's-cradle with every train of thought. They drove me distracted while I was having influenza, gazing at me with large eyes and saying: O Sylvia, you are so ill, you'll soon be dead. And who will feed us then? Feed us now!
Sylvia Townsend Warner
I seem to use this word 'kind' very frequently. When one is unhappy or anxious it is a quality one dwells on.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Elizabeth ... had the prerogative of the rich that she could be generous with large sums and niggardly over small ones.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
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
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
The baby romped on my lap like a short stout salmon.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Anticipation of pleasure is a pleasure in itself.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
no one wants to be praised for possibilities when one has submitted performances.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
