Frances Partridge > Quotes

“Looking back into childhood is like turning a telescope the wrong way around. Everything appears in miniature, but with a clarity it probably does not deserve; moreover it has become concentrated and stylized, taking shape in symbolism. Thus it is that I sometimes see my infant self as having been set down before a blank slate on which to construct a map or schema of the external world, and as hesitantly beginning to sketch it, with many false starts and much rubbing-out, the anatomy of my universe. Happiness and sorrow, love and friendship, hostility, a sense of guilt and more abstract concepts still, must all find a place somewhere, much as an architect lays out the plan of a house he is designing - hall, dining-room and bedrooms - but must not forget the bathroom. In a child’s map, too, some of the rooms are connected by a serving-hatch, while others are sealed off behind baize doors. How can the fragments possibly be combined to make sense? Yet this map or finished diagram, constructed in the course of ten or twelve years’ puzzling, refuses to be ignored, and for some time to come will make itself felt as bones through flesh, to emerge as the complex organism which adults think of as their philosophy of life. Presumably it has its origins in both heredity and enviorment. So with heredity I shall begin.”
― Frances Partridge, Love in Bloomsbury: Memories

“The fear that all these magical impressions (now clear in my mind) will instantly begin to fade, torments me.”
― Frances Partridge, Other People: Diaries 1963-1966

“The exciting truth about friendship is that it is founded on choice; it's possibilities of growth and change are manifold. It fertilizes the soil of one's life, send up fresh shoots, encourages cross-pollination and the creation of new species.
Here and now I declare my infinite gratitude to my friends.”
― Frances Partridge, Love in Bloomsbury: Memories

“I don’t want my ‘part’ taken! I haven’t ‘got’ a part! I hate the stupid geometrical figures by which people try to understand the emotions of others, imposing hard straight lines - or ‘sides’ as they call them - onto tender curvaceous human beings who have none.”
― Frances Partridge

“..., I have realised,..., that a very early friend is more than a mere influence; she is in a sense a part of one; she has provided some of the ingredients in the cake that has become one's self, for good or ill - in other words a self is not a discrete entity but has a permeable shell like that of an egg, and its very yolk and white are infiltrated by the personalities of early friends.”
― Frances Partridge, Love in Bloomsbury

“A small child generally accepts and ingests the stream of its experience as steadily as it gazes over the brim of its mug, gulping down the milk and making a detailed survey of its physical surroundings to the same rhythm.”
― Frances Partridge