109 Quotes by Rose Macaulay

One could do with a longer year - so much to do, so little done, alas.

Adultery is a meanness and a stealing, a taking away from someone what should be theirs, a great selfishness, and surrounded and guarded by lies lest it should be found out. And out of meanness and selfishness and lying flow love and joy and peace beyond anything that can be imagined.

You point out that war is only a symptom of the whole horrid business of human behavior, and cannot be isolated. And that, even if we abolish war, we shall not abolish hate and greed. So might it have been argued about slave emancipation, that slavery was but one aspect of human disgustingness, and that to abolish it would not end the barbarity that causes it. But did the abolitionists therefore waste their breath? And do we waste ours now in protesting against war?

the position of women, that sad and well-nigh universal blot on civilizations, was never far from her mind.

I seldom meet actors, they are to me bright strange fishes swimming in an element alien to me; I feel that to meet them is to See Life.

Cranks live by theory, not by pure desire. They want votes, peace, nuts, liberty, and spinning-looms not because they love these things, as a child loves jam, but because they think they ought to have them. That is one element which makes the crank.

How agreeable to watch, from the other side of the high stile, this mighty creature, this fat bull of Bashan, snorting, champing, pawing the earth, lashing the tail, breathing defiance at heaven and at me ... his heart hot with hate, unable to climb a stile.

To lunch with the important ... that should be the daily goal of those for whom life is not a playground but a ladder.

God very seldom succeeds. He has very nearly everything against him, of course.