36 Quotes by Jan Struther

...[T]he mechanics of life should never be allowed to interfere with living.

It oughtn't to need a war to make us talk to each other in buses, and invent our own amusements in the evenings, and live simply, and eat sparingly, and recover the use of our legs, and get up early enough to see the sun rise. However, it has needed one: which is about the severest criticism our civilization could have.

Mrs. Miniver suddenly understood why she was enjoying the forties so much better than she had enjoyed the thirties: it was the difference between August and October, between the heaviness of late summer and the sparkle of early autumn, between the ending of an old phase and the beginning of a fresh one.

A week was what she wanted: a nice manageable chunk of time with a beginning, a middle, and an end, containing, if desired, a space for each of the wonders of the world, the champions of Christendom, the deadly sins, or the colours of the rainbow. (Monday was definitely yellow, Thursday a dull indigo, Friday violet. About the others she didn't feel so strongly.)

It was more like a form of claustrophobia -- a dread of exchanging the freedom of her own self-imposed routine for the inescapable burden of somebody else's.

It took me forty years on earth To reach this sure conclusion: There is no Heaven but clarity, No Hell except confusion.

To visit a new country for the first time is great fun; but it is even greater fun to introduce somebody else to a country that you know.

When there is a world scarcity of any commodity, whether it’s food or free speech, then the whole world must go on rations in order that eventually the whole world may have it again in plenty.

To be entirely at leisure for one day is to be for one day an immortal.