Winifred Holtby (23 June 1898 – 29 September 1935) was an English novelist and journalist, now best known for her novel South Riding, which was posthumously published in 1936.
Oh, time betrays us. Time is the great enemy.
Everybody's tragedy is somebody's nuisance.
I find you in all small and lovely things; in the little fishes like flames in the green water, in the furred and stupid softness of bumble-bees fat as laughter, in all the chiming radiance of warmth and light and scent in the summer garden.
Youth knows no remedy for grief but death.
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.
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.
Progress. There's a good deal too much o' this progress about nowadays, an', what's more, it'll have to stop.
If you are rich, you have lovely cars, and jars full of flowers, and books in rows, and a wireless, and the best sort of gramophone and meringues for supper.
All adventuring is rash, and all innovations dangerous. But not nearly so dangerous as stagnation and dry rot. From grooves, cliques, clichés and resignation - Good Lord deliver us!
Love needs the stiffening of respect, the give and take of equality.
A sense of humor is so handy, isn't it? It lets you see both sides of a question so that you never need do anything.
I am much perturbed by this business of sickness. Our bodies seem so easily to leap into the saddle where our minds should be. People who are ill become changelings.
I can't think why I was cursed with this inordinate desire to write, if the high gods weren't going to give me some more adquate means of expressing myself than that which my present pedestrian prose affords.
Most gay, conversational, careless, lovely city. . . where one drinks golden Tokay until one feels most beautiful, and warm and loved - oh, Budapesth!
The more I see of dogs, the more I like children.
Question everyone in authority, and see that you get sensible answers to your questions. . . questioning does not mean the end of loving, and loving does not mean the abnegation of intelligence. Vow as much love to your country as you like. . . but, I implore you, do not forget to question.
I like a bit of color myself, I must say. At my time of life, if you wear nothing but black, people might think you were too mean to change frocks between funerals.
I advise nobody to drown sorrow in cocoa. It is bad for the figure and it does not alleviate the sorrow.
Life flows on over death as water closes over a stone dropped into a pool. . . . Fate is certain; death is certain; but the courage and nobility of men and women matter more than these.
There's never been a lack of men willing to die bravely. The trouble is to find a few able to live sensibly.