17 Quotes by Dorothy Whipple

If we could be seen thinking, we would show blown bright one moment, dark the next, like embers; subject to every passing word and thought of our own or other people's, mostly other people's.

It matters to ourselves, of course, but it matters terribly to other people. Moral failure or spiritual failure or whatever you call it, makes such a vicious circle... It seems as if when we love people and they fall short, we retaliate by falling shorter ourselves. Children are like that. Adults have a fearful responsibility. When they fail to live up to what children expect of them, the children give up themselves. So each generation keeps failing the next.

But Mrs. Brockington, old, alone, almost crippled by rheumatism, had faith and courage. She had more. She had a warm serenity, and when Ellen was with her, she almost had it too. For goodness is catching. Mrs. Brockington was further on the road Ellen wanted to travel, and because Mrs. Brockington had got there, Ellen felt she might get there too.

Love is happy only when it is confident. When it is humble, it is full of pain and misgiving; there is hardly any happiness to be had out of it at all.

With love, you don't even need butter on your bread; without it, an elaborate feast is necessary to make you come to the table.

Marriage or no marriage, children or no children, life - the real life - is lived in the spirit, and I hold that the right education helps the spirit to maintain its own life, makes it independent of material prosperity or adversity. That is the ideal we strive for. To enrich the spirit, to enrich the personality.

As is usual with the ignorant, long words had the fascination for both girls that obstacles on the road have for a bad driver; instead of avoiding them they ran into them.

Good cooking is a form of benevolence. Molly gladly sacrificed a fine afternoon to give pleasure by a cake at tea-time. She would lay her afternoon and fresh air on the table with the cake and be rewarded by the glow of pleasure she felt when they enjoyed it.

Shyness in the young may be charming to look at but is painful to the one who suffers it.