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The things that one most wants to do are the things that are probably most worth doing.

Winifred Holtby

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Winifred Holtby
Age: 37 †
Born: 1898
Born: June 23
Died: 1935
Died: September 29
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Suffragette
Writer
Rudston
East Riding of Yorkshire
Probably
Dream
Things
Worth
Wants

More quotes by Winifred Holtby

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public work brings a vicarious but assured sense of immortality. We may be poor, weak, timid, in debt to our landlady, bullied by our nieces, stiff in the joints, shortsighted and distressed we shall perish, but the cause endures the cause is great.
Winifred Holtby
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Progress. There's a good deal too much o' this progress about nowadays, an', what's more, it'll have to stop.
Winifred Holtby
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The only difficulty is to know what bits to choose and what to leave out. Novel-writing is not creation, it is selection.
Winifred Holtby
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Is this the final treachery of time, that the old become a burden upon the young?
Winifred Holtby
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If you are rich, you have lovely cars, and jars full of flowers, and books in rows, and a wireless, and the best sort of gramophone and meringues for supper.
Winifred Holtby
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Sorrow and frustration have their power. The world is moved by people with great discontents. Happiness is a drug. It can make men blind and deaf and insensible to reality. There are times when only sorrow can give to sorrow.
Winifred Holtby
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When a person that one loves is in the world and alive and well, and pleased to be in the world, then to miss them is only a new flavor, a salt sharpness in experience. It is when the beloved is unhappy or maimed or troubled that one misses with pain.
Winifred Holtby
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Love needs the stiffening of respect, the give and take of equality.
Winifred Holtby
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the ruder lecturers are, and the louder their voices, the more converts they make to their opinions.
Winifred Holtby
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You are quite, quite wrong if you think that ... I find your happiness painful. What matters is that happiness - the golden day - should exist in the world, not much to whom it comes. For all of us it is so transitory a thing, how could one not draw joy from its arrival?
Winifred Holtby
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I advise nobody to drown sorrow in cocoa. It is bad for the figure and it does not alleviate the sorrow.
Winifred Holtby
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no truth is strong enough to defeat a well-established legend.
Winifred Holtby
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I would, if I could, always feed to music. The singularly graceless action of thus filling one's body with roots and dead animals and powdered grain is given some significance then. One can perform as a ritual what one is shamed to do as a utilitarian action.
Winifred Holtby
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Oh, time betrays us. Time is the great enemy.
Winifred Holtby
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Life flows on over death as water closes over a stone dropped into a pool. ... Fate is certain death is certain but the courage and nobility of men and women matter more than these.
Winifred Holtby
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Why, why, when one writes, does a sort of shackle bind one's imagination? I become conscious of a deadening mediocrity, perhaps a form of mental cowardice, and I long to break free, to let my imagination take wings. It doesn't - yet.
Winifred Holtby
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The crown of life is neither happiness nor annihilation it is understanding.
Winifred Holtby
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What with the reviews of critics, the sarcasms of one's friends, the reproaches of one's own taste, there's precious little peace after publishing a book.
Winifred Holtby
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Surely, if life is good, it is good throughout its substance we cannot separate men's activities from women's and say, these are worthy of praise and these unworthy.
Winifred Holtby
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If we haven't a grouch against Fortune, we seem unable to avoid one against ourselves.
Winifred Holtby