Quote

we are so little, so ignorant, so feeble an infant race crawling on a planet between immensities we haven't even begun to understand, that really we have no grounds for either congratulation or despair.

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
Little
Planet
Crawling
Even
Havens
Feeble
Really
Planets
Grounds
Haven
Congratulations
Either
Infant
Race
Begun
Understand
Ignorant
Congratulation
Littles
Despair
Immensity

More quotes by Winifred Holtby

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The world, with all its beauty and adventure, its richness and variety, is darkened by cruelty. Death, if it ends the loveliness, the adventure, ends also that. Death balances the picture.
Winifred Holtby
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Progress? It ought to be stopped, that's what I say. If the Lord meant chickens to come out of incubators he'd never have made hens, it stands to reason.
Winifred Holtby
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Most gay, conversational, careless, lovely city ... where one drinks golden Tokay until one feels most beautiful, and warm and loved - oh, Budapesth!
Winifred Holtby
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Really, trees are nearly as important as men, and much better behaved.
Winifred Holtby
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All adventuring is rash, and all innovations dangerous. But not nearly so dangerous as stagnation and dry rot. From grooves, cliques, clichés and resignation - Good Lord deliver us!
Winifred Holtby
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I can't think why I was cursed with this inordinate desire to write, if the high gods weren't going to give me some more adquate means of expressing myself than that which my present pedestrian prose affords.
Winifred Holtby
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This alone is to be feared - the closed mind, the sleeping imagination, the death of the spirit. The death of the body is to that, I think, a little thing.
Winifred Holtby
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no truth is strong enough to defeat a well-established legend.
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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We're so busy resigning ourselves to the inevitable that we don't even ask if it is inevitable. We've got to have courage, to take our future into our hands. If the law is oppressive, we must change the law. If tradition is obstructive, we must break tradition. If the system is unjust, we must reform the system.
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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I am fierce for work. Without work I am nothing.
Winifred Holtby
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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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the damned book I am writing is like the driveling of a weak-kneed sea calf. If I were sufficiently strong minded, I should tear it up an start again. But I don't.
Winifred Holtby
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Question everyone in authority, and see that you get sensible answers to your questions ... questioning does not mean the end of loving, and loving does not mean the abnegation of intelligence. Vow as much love to your country as you like ... but, I implore you, do not forget to question.
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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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 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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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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Everybody's tragedy is somebody's nuisance.
Winifred Holtby