Flora Thompson (5 December 1876 – 21 May 1947) was an English novelist and poet best known for her semi-autobiographical trilogy about the English countryside, Lark Rise to Candleford.
I do not compare the past with the present without a prejudice for either, but, great as the improvement in country life is in many respects, it seems a pity the old cheap, wholesome dishes have gone to make way for tinned and preserved foods.
What greater restoratives have we poor mortals than a good meal taken in the company of loving friends?
What is charm, it is not a moral quality. . it is not intellectual for no man by much thinking is able to add a grain of it to his personality. One either has it or has it not, it cannot be acquired or even cultivated. It is not physical even. . it seems to be added to the human personality, an aura, a glow, the gold dust upon a butterfly's wing, the bloom upon a peach.
Readers have no doubt noticed how seldom builders live in houses of their own construction. You will find a town or village expanding in all directions with their masterpieces of modernity in the way of houses and bungalows; but the builder himself you will usually find living nearer the heart of things, snugly and comfortably housed in some more substantial, if less convenient, building of less recent date.
A liar did ought to have a good memory.
Special qualities are required of the essayist. A poem or a novel may spring from the inner consciousness of an author. . reasoning poers must be brought to reinforce imagination.
You can lock up from a thief, but you can't from a liar.
Words as to the inner emotions do not come readily to me, for I have led an isolated life mentally and spiritually.
Candleford Green was but a small village and there were fields and meadows and woods all around it. As soon as Laura crossed the doorstep, she could see some of these. But mere seeing from a distance did not satisfy her; she longed to go alone far into the fields and hear the birds singing, the brooks tinkling, and the wind rustling through the corn, as she had when a child. To smell things and touch things, warm earth and flowers and grasses, and to stand and gaze where no one could see her, drinking it all in.
Pale purple as the bloom om a ripe plum, veined with the gold of late flowering gorse, set with small slender birches,just turning yellow,with red-berried rowans and thicket of bracken, the heath lay steeped in sunshine.
Strict honesty was the policy of most of them; although there were a few who were said to 'find anything before 'tis lost' and to whom findings were keepings.
Nature knows no calendar, the seasons move in a circle.
Other days, other ways; and, although they have now been greatly improved upon, the old country midwives did at least succeed in bringing into the world many generations of our forefathers, or where should we be now? —
So quiet and subtle is the beauty of December that escapes the notice of many people their whole lives through. . Colour gives way to form. every branch distinct, in a delicate tracery against the sky. . new vistas obscured all Summer by leafage, now open up.
We cannot bring the good old days back but, if we must eat mass-made foods, get laws passed to insist upon its goodness and purity.
The luxuries of the few were becoming necessities of the many.
Some great poet or philosopher once said that " he who goes to nature for comfort must go to her empty handed " , and I think he was right.
Alas! in nature, as in art, we gain only according to our capacity. You cannot put an ocean in a pint pot.
It was a morning of ground mist, yellow sunshine, and high rifts of blue, white-cloud-dappled sky. The leaves were still thick on the trees, but de-spangled gossamer threads hung on the bushes and the shrill little cries of unrest of the swallows skimming the green open park spaces of the park told of autumn and change.
Manner and morals have improved, improved wages and world travel during the war have had effect, and the farm labourer now is an intelligent, self respecting workman, on a level at least with the town artisan. The village rustic of the past no longer exists outside of the comic papers.