Quote

The greatest mercy, I have often thought, of the Mediterranean coast lies in its mosquitoes. Did we not suffer from their unwelcome attention, we could not bear our holidays to end.

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
Suffering
Suffer
Lying
Mercy
Often
Bear
Mediterranean
Ends
Bears
Unwelcome
Thought
Travel
Mosquitoes
Lies
Holidays
Greatest
Coast
Attention
Holiday

More quotes by Winifred Holtby

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But to write - that is grief and labor and to read what one has written - how unlike the story as one saw it how dull, how spirtless - that is enough to send one weeping to bed.
Winifred Holtby
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I find you in all small and lovely things in the little fishes like flames in the green water, in the furred and stupid softness of bumble-bees fat as laughter, in all the chiming radiance of warmth and light and scent in the summer garden.
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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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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Is this the final treachery of time, that the old become a burden upon the young?
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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the ruder lecturers are, and the louder their voices, the more converts they make to their opinions.
Winifred Holtby
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Oh, time betrays us. Time is the great enemy.
Winifred Holtby
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[On golf:] One of the most distressing defects of civilization.
Winifred Holtby
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It's the things you don't do, not the things you do, you feel most sorry for.
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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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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Those who prepare for war get it.
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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why haven't we seventy lives? One is no use.
Winifred Holtby
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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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Remorse ... is one of the many afflictions for which time finds a cure.
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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Teachers have power. We may cripple them by petty economics by Government regulations, by the foolish criticism of an uninformed press but their power exists for good or evil.
Winifred Holtby
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I am fierce for work. Without work I am nothing.
Winifred Holtby