Quotes from Winifred Holtby

Really, trees are nearly as important as men, and much better behaved.

This alone is to be feared - the closed mind, the sleeping imagination, the death of the spirit. The death of the body is to that, I think, a little thing.

Teachers have power. We may cripple them by petty economics; by Government regulations, by the foolish criticism of an uninformed press; but their power exists for good or evil.

God give me work till my life shall end And life till my work is done.

Love needs the stiffening of respect, the give and take of equality.

it is the brevity of life which makes it tolerable; its experiences have value because they have an end.

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.

Oh, time betrays us. Time is the great enemy.

The crown of life is neither happiness nor annihilation it is understanding.

Remorse ... is one of the many afflictions for which time finds a cure.

These are they whose youth was violently severed by war and death; a word on the telephone, a scribbled line on paper, and their future ceased. They have built up their lives again, but their safety is not absolute, their fortress not impregnable.

Those who prepare for war get it.

There's never been a lack of men willing to die bravely. The trouble is to find a few able to live sensibly.

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.

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.

I am fierce for work. Without work I am nothing.

What a strange distance there is between ill people and well ones.

Is this the final treachery of time, that the old become a burden upon the young?

We're so busy resigning ourselves to the inevitable that we don't even ask if it is inevitable. We've got to have courage, to take our future into our hands. If the law is oppressive, we must change the law. If tradition is obstructive, we must break tradition. If the system is unjust, we must reform the system.

But questioning does not mean the end of loving, and loving does not mean the abnegation of intelligence

I was born to be a spinster, and, by God, I'm going to spin.

And not there, not there, not there, Your laughing face and your wind-blown hair Leave not even a ghost in the garden.

The things that one most wants to do are the things that are probably most worth doing

Their language was an old wild language. They had known incredible loves and dark adventures and the twisted streets of alien cities. They had known the green breaking waves of the sea, and the green aisles of the silent forests. They had known war and death and fierce, cruel elation.