Quote

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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Winifred Holtby
Age: 37 †
Born: 1898
Born: June 23
Died: 1935
Died: September 29
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Suffragette
Writer
Rudston
East Riding of Yorkshire
Tears
Calf
Start
Calves
Strong
Sufficiently
Book
Damned
Writing
Tear
Like
Minded
Sea
Weak
Kneed

More quotes by 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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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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Those who prepare for war get it.
Winifred Holtby
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But questioning does not mean the end of loving, and loving does not mean the abnegation of intelligence
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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[On golf:] One of the most distressing defects of civilization.
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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There's never been a lack of men willing to die bravely. The trouble is to find a few able to live sensibly.
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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Love needs the stiffening of respect, the give and take of equality.
Winifred Holtby
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Oh, time betrays us. Time is the great enemy.
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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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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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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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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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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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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The things that one most wants to do are the things that are probably most worth doing.
Winifred Holtby
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I am much perturbed by this business of sickness. Our bodies seem so easily to leap into the saddle where our minds should be. People who are ill become changelings.
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