84 Quotes by Winifred Holtby

If we haven’t a grouch against Fortune, we seem unable to avoid one against ourselves.

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...

What with the reviews of critics, the sarcasms of one’s friends, the reproaches of one’s own taste, there’s precious little peace after publishing a book...

I believe that service lies in this – that each of us should use in the highest way, to the very widest possible extent, the abilities and powers they have been given. I believe that to be content with humbler service, when one is able to stand greater responsibility, is only cowardice.

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.

Thus they had harvested at Anderby since those far off years when the Danes broke in across the headland and dyed with blood the trampled barley. Thus and thus had the workers passed, and the children waved their garlands following the last load home. Thus had Mary and other Mary Robsons before her welcomed the master of the harvest.

Look here,′ she began, ’you can’t go on like that, you know. If you are really keen on a thing, and it’s a good thing, you ought to go and do it. It is no use waiting till people tell you that you may go. Asking permission is a coward’s way of shifting responsibility on to some one else.

Oh, lovely world,′ thought Sarah, in love with life and all its varied richness.

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...