Mary Westmacott > Quotes

“I’ve always suspected that a sense of humour is a kind of parlour trick we civilized folk have taught ourselves as an insurance against disillusionment.”
― Mary Westmacott, The Rose and the Yew Tree

“Better to wear out than to rust out!”
― Mary Westmacott, Absent in the Spring

“You are alone and you always will be. But, please God, you'll never know it.”
― Mary Westmacott, Absent in the Spring

“That was why she had had to come here, to the desert. This clear, terrible light would show her what she was. Would show her the truth of all the things she hadn't wanted to look at—the things that, really, she had known all along.”
― Mary Westmacott, Absent in the Spring

“She had never needed to think about it before. It had been quite easy to fill her life with unimportant trivialities that left her no time for self-knowledge.”
― Mary Westmacott, Absent in the Spring

“Nobody ever realized that Celia was shy. They thought she was haughty and conceited. Nobody realized how humble this pretty girl was feeling—how bitterly conscious of her social defects.”
― Mary Westmacott, Unfinished Portrait

“She should have known.

If you loved people you should know about them.

You didn't know because it was so much easier to believe the pleasant, easy things that you would like to be true, and not distress yourself with the things that really were true.”
― Mary Westmacott, Absent in the Spring

“But in the night, with the shadows and the dream still clinging round you, it was difficult to be sure of anything. Perhaps nothing was what it seemed and you had always known it really.”
― Mary Westmacott

“It wasn’t quite so easy when it came to writing down. Her mind had always gone on about six paragraphs farther than the one she was writing down—and then by the time she got to that, the exact wording had gone out of her head.”
― Mary Westmacott, Unfinished Portrait

“You can take it from me, Averil, that a man who's not doing the work he wants to do—the work he was made to do—is only half a man. I tell you as surely as I'm standing here, that if you take Rupert Cargill away from his work and make it impossible for him to go on with that work, the day will come when you will have to stand by and see the man you love unhappy, unfulfilled—old before his time—tired and disheartened—only living with half his life. And if you think your love, or any woman's love, can make up to him for that, then I tell you plainly that you're a damned sentimental little fool.”
― Mary Westmacott, Absent in the Spring

“You can't win when you're fighting someone who doesn't know there is a fight.”
― Mary Westmacott, The Rose and the Yew Tree

“Listen, Ann, there are just two things that I’ve no use for whatever—someone telling me how noble they are and what moral reasons they have for the things they do, and the other is someone going on moaning about how wickedly they have behaved. Both statements may be true—recognize the truth of your actions, by all means, but having done so, pass on. You can’t put the clock back and you can’t usually undo what you’ve done. Continue living.”
― Mary Westmacott, A Daughter's a Daughter

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder, they say, but my Aunt Jane used to add on to that, "of somebody else". Out of sight, out of mind is the truer proverb.”
― Mary Westmacott, A Daughter's a Daughter

“You curl yourself up in the window-seat as though life were a book you were reading!”
― Mary Westmacott, The Rose and the Yew Tree

“Now look here, my dear child, I’m going to talk to you quite plainly. You’re not a heaven-sent genius. I don’t think you’ll ever write a masterpiece. But what you certainly are is a born storyteller. You think of spiritualism and mediums and Welsh Revivalist meetings in a kind of romantic haze. You may be all wrong about them, but you see them as ninety-nine per cent of the reading public (who know nothing about them either) see them. That ninety-nine per cent won’t enjoy reading about carefully acquired facts—they want fiction—which is plausible untruth. It must be plausible, mind. You’ll find it will be the same with your Cornish fisher folk that you told me about. Write your book about them, but, for heaven’s sake, don’t go near Cornwall or fishermen until you’ve finished. Then you’ll write the kind of grimly realistic stuff that people expect when they read about Cornish fisher folk. You don’t want to go there and find out that Cornish fishermen are not a breed by themselves but something quite closely allied to a Walworth plumber. You’ll never write well about anything you really know about, because you’ve got an honest mind. You can be imaginatively dishonest but not practically dishonest. You can’t write lies about something you know, but you’ll be able to tell the most splendid lies about something you don’t know. You’ve got to write about the fabulous (fabulous to you) and not about the real. Now, go away and do it.”
― Mary Westmacott, Unfinished Portrait

“Najmanje što čoveku treba u predizbornoj kampanji jesu ljudi koji zaista misle svojom glavom.”
― Mary Westmacott, The Rose and the Yew Tree

“Книжки — то звичка, яка формує залежність.”
― Mary Westmacott, A Daughter's a Daughter

“Yes, isn't that was politics really boil down to in the end? What people will believe, what they will stand, what they can be induced to think? Never plain fact.”
― Mary Westmacott, The Rose and the Yew Tree

“You won’t take one risk,’ I went on. ‘But you will take another—a simply colossal one.’

She said less calmly, with a touch of eagerness:

‘But that’s entirely different—entirely. It’s when you know what a thing’s like that you won’t risk it. An unknown risk—there’s something rather alluring about that—something adventurous.”
― Mary Westmacott

“You can't give in to a thing because you're terrified. It isn't decent.”
― Mary Westmacott, Unfinished Portrait

“Don‘t you think a woman can be poor and happy?'
'Certainly, given the necessary qualifications.'
'Which are—what? Love and trust?'
'No, you idiotic child. A sense of humor, a tough hide and the valuable quality of being sufficient unto oneself.”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“I was out to save a life, and I couldn't bother about a mere reputation.”
― Mary Westmacott

“There was an Episode of Skyscrapers—New York seen upside down as from a circling aeroplane in the early dawn of morning. And the strange inharmonious rhythm beat ever more insistently—with increasing menacing monotony.”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“Credo che si incontri sempre qualche possibilitàdi fuga... In genere uno se ne rende conto solo dopo, quando si guarda indietro, ma è lì...”
― Mary Westmacott, The Rose and the Yew Tree

“Tu ti attieni al Tempo. Ma il Tempo non vuol dire assolutamente niente. Cinque minuti e mille anni hanno lo stesso significato. E poi citò piano:" Il momento della rosa e il momento del tasso hanno uguale durata... ".”
― Mary Westmacott, The Rose and the Yew Tree

“She had learnt something, too, of the curious inconsistencies of human nature, of how difficult it was to assess people as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ as she had been inclined to do in her days of youthful dogmatism.”
― Mary Westmacott, A Daughter’s a Daughter

“I am an old man. There are things in which I take pleasure—there are other things—such as the music of today—which do not give me pleasure. But all the same I know Genius when I meet it. There are a hundred charlatans—a hundred breakers down of tradition who think that by doing so they have accomplished something wonderful. And there is the hundred and first—a creator, a man who steps boldly into the future—’ He paused, then went on. ‘Yes, I know genius when I meet it. I may not like it—but I recognize it. Groen, whoever he is, has genius . . . The music of tomorrow . . .”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“Čestit čovek. Da, to je mnogo lakše nego se truditi da veruješ u Boga. To nije lako, veoma je teško i vrlo zastrašujuće. A ono što je još strašnije jeste dozvoliti sebi da poveruješ da Bog veruje u tebe.”
― Mary Westmacott, The Burden

“The will of God! Would you be able to say that if God’s will didn’t happen to coincide with Nell Chetwynd’s comfort, I wonder? You don’t know anything about God or you couldn’t have spoken like that, gently patting God on the back for making life comfortable and easy for you. Do you know a text that used to frighten me in the Bible? This night shall thy soul be required of thee. When God requires your soul of you, be sure you’ve got a soul to give Him!”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“Little boys going on asking foolish questions,’ said Nurse, with the deftness of a long professional career behind her.”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread