Top Winifred Holtby Quotes

Winifred Holtby Biography

Winifred Holtby (23 June 1898 – 29 September 1935) was an English novelist and journalist, now best known for her novel South Riding, which was posthumously published in 1936.

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Winifred Holtby Quotes

It's the things you don't do, not the things you do, you feel most sorry for.

Feels, Regret, Sorry, Things

We each live in a private, distorted, individual world - stars turning in space, warmed for a moment by each other's light, then lost in infinite distance.

Distance, Distorted, Light, Stars, Turning

Nature is not silent, and never was a name more derisively inappropriate than when we speak of these non-human creatures who hoot and crow and bray as the dumb animals.

Animal, Creatures, Derisively, Dumb, Names, Nature

Is this the final treachery of time, that the old become a burden upon the young?

Age, Become, Finals, Time, Treachery

The only difficulty is to know what bits to choose and what to leave out. Novel-writing is not creation, it is selection.

Bits, Creation, Difficulty, Leave, Selection, Writing

Those who prepare for war get it.

Prepare, War

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

Dream, Probably, Things, Want, Worth

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.

Death, Fate, Life And Death, Men, Pool, Stone

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.

Exists, Government, Power, Press, Teacher, Teaching

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.

Equality, Life Is Good, Men, Separate, Substance, Worthy

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.

Become, Body, Changelings, Easily, Mind, People

There's never been a lack of men willing to die bravely. The trouble is to find a few able to live sensibly.

Able, Die, Live, Men, Peace, Willing

Remorse. . . is one of the many afflictions for which time finds a cure.

Affliction, Cure, Cures, Finds, Regret, Remorse

Youth knows no remedy for grief but death.

Death, Grief, Knows, Suicide, Youth

Everybody's tragedy is somebody's nuisance.

Nuisance, Tragedy

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.

Book, Damned, Minded, Strong, Writing

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?

Exist, Happiness, Think, Thinking, What Matters, World

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.

Animal, Body, Given, Roots, Significance, Singularly

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.

Expressing, Mean, Pedestrian, Think, Thinking, Writing

Oh, time betrays us. Time is the great enemy.

Betray, Betrays, Enemy, Time

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Winifred Holtby Biography

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