Among the many problems which beset the novelist, not the least weighty is the choice of the moment at which to begin his novel.
One must be businesslike, although the glass is falling.
I cannot abide the Mr. and Mrs. Noah attitude towards marriage; the animals went in two by two, forever stuck together with glue.
The public, as a whole, finds reassurance in longevity, and, after the necessary interlude of reaction, is disposed to recognize extreme old age as a sign of excellence. The long-liver has triumphed over at least one of man’s initial handicaps: the brevity of life.
Click, clack, click, clack, went their conversation, like so many knitting-needles, purl, plain, purl, plain, achieving a complex pattern of references, cross-references, Christian names, nicknames, and fleeting allusions.
Nothing shows up the difference between the things said or read, so much as the daily experience of it.
Women, like men, ought to have their years so glutted with freedom that they hate the very idea of freedom.
I suppose the pleasure of the country life lies really in the eternally renewed evidences of the determination to live. That is a truism when said, but anything but a truism when daily observed. Nothing shows up the difference between the thing said or read, so much as the daily experience of it.
To hope for Paradise is to live in Paradise, a very different thing from actually getting there.
Things were not tragic for us then, because although we cared passionately we didn’t care deeply.
I worshipped dead men for their strength, Forgetting I was strong.
Travel is the most private of pleasures. There is no greater bore than the travel bore. We do not in the least want to hear what he has seen in Hong-Kong.
The writer catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind.
Ambition, old as mankind, the immemorial weakness of the strong.
A good start in life is as important to plants as it is to children: they must develop strong roots in a congenial soil, otherwise they will never make the growth that will serve them richly according to their needs in their adult life.
All craftsmen share a knowledge. They have heldReality down fluttering to a bench.
Forget not bees in winter, though they sleep.
A man and his tools make a man and his trade.
Autumn in felted slipper shuffles on, Muted yet fiery. – Vita Sackville-West.
What is beautiful is good, and who is good will soon be beautiful.