125 quotes found
"One can only influence the strong characters in life, not the weak; and it is the height of vanity to suppose that you can make an honest man of anyone."
"Rich men's houses are seldom beautiful, rarely comfortable, and never original. It is a constant source of surprise to people of moderate means to observe how little a big fortune contributes to Beauty."
"From the happy expression on their faces you might have supposed that they welcomed the war. I have met with men who loved stamps, and stones, and snakes, but I could not imagine any man loving war."
"Lloyd George? There is no Lloyd George. There is a marvellous brain; but if you were to shut him in a room and look through the keyhole there would be nobody there."
"He's very clever, but sometimes his brains go to his head."
"She tells enough white lies to ice a wedding cake."
"He couldn't see a belt without hitting below it."
"My dear old friend King George V told me he would never have died but for that vile doctor, Lord Dawson of Penn."
"The t is silent, as in Harlow."
"You can do something with talent, but nothing with genius...."
"Kitchener, a great man or a great poster?"
"Margo. The 'T' is silent as in Harlow."
"Of a smooth society lady, she said, "she told enough white lies to ice a cake." And of a particularly hideous house she'd been to stay in, she said: "It was so uncomfortable – the chairs were covered in apples stuffed with lead. And in the hall, (talking presumably of the butler) "I was met by a stout rhinoceros carrying visiting-cards in one hand, and azaleas in the other.""
"The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature."
"... no matter where she takes off from, she brings the discourse back to Margot Asquith. Such singleness of purpose is met but infrequently."
"Through the pages of [her book] Lay Sermons walk the great. I don't say that Margot Asquith actually permits us to rub elbows with them ourselves, but she willingly shows us her own elbow, which has been, so to say, honed on the mighty."
"The lady of the house, notorious Margot, was less remarkable than unlikely to escape remark ever since her supposed début in Benson's Dodo, when she must have been "a resolute little tit", as was said of young Victoria. A woman of emphatic character and affections, she was either an ally or an embarrassment, at moments both. Ebullient, shrewd and tactless, she assisted her consort rather by energy than subtlety, for she had bouts of belief that honesty is thwarted by politeness. "Why," she must say to the Swiss Minister, "are the Swiss the plainest people in Europe?" She was clever but not profound, and said more trenchant things than good ones in her desire to reign over a world which she was always making her own. I was sorry for her when it slipped too soon for a soul irrevocably on the active list. She could not, and would not, be omitted from any call-up of ghosts."
"The flowers of the forest are a’ wide awae."
"Look to your consciences and remember that the theatre of the world is wider than the realm of England."
"In my end is my beginning."
"There is but one true kirk and that is the kirk of rome."
"I am the Queen of France and you are my subject"
"Somewhere on the other side of this wide night and the distance between us, I am thinking of you. The room is turning slowly away from the moon."
"Not a red rose or a satin heart. I give you an onion. It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. It promises light like the careful undressing of love...I am trying to be truthful."
"Here. It will blind you with tears like a lover. It will make your reflection a wobbling photo of grief."
"Light gatherer. You fell from a star into my lap, the soft lamp at the bedside mirrored in you, and now you shine like a snowgirl, a buttercup under a chin, the wide blue yonder you squeal at and fly in."
"I cannot say where you are. Unreachable by prayer, even if poems are prayers. Unseeable in the air, even if souls are stars."
"As anyone who has the slightest knowledge of my work knows, I have little in common with Larkin, who was tall, taciturn and thin-on-top, and unlike him I laugh, nay, sneer, in the face of death. I will concede one point: we are both lesbian poets."
"What do I have to help me, without spell or prayer, endure this hour, endless, heartless, anonymous, the death of love?"
"When you have a child, your previous life seems like someone else's. It's like living in a house and suddenly finding a room you didn't know was there, full of treasure and light."
"There'll be what you might call a moment of inspiration – a way of seeing or feeling or remembering, an instance or a person that's made a large impression. Like the sand and the oyster, it's a creative irritant. In each poem, I'm trying to reveal a truth, so it can't have a fictional beginning"
"Six hours like this for a few francs. Belly nipple arse in the window light, he drains the colour from me. Further to the right, Madame. And do try to be still. I shall be represented analytically and hung in great museums. The bourgeoisie will coo at such an image of a river-whore. They call it Art."
"This is the word tightrope. Now imagine a man, inching across it in the space between our thoughts. He holds our breath.There is no word net.You want him to fall, don't you? I guessed as much; he teeters but succeeds. The word applause is written all over him."
"One saw I was alive. Loosened his belt. My bowels opened in a ragged gape of fear. Between the gap of corpses I could see a child. The soldiers laughed. Only a matter of days separate this from acts of torture now. They shot her in the eye."
"I got the recall, the second audition. That was when I started sweating. This huge thing. And it was so secretive I couldn't even tell BBC reception where I was going, had to pretend it was for something called Panic Moon, which is an anagram of companion."
"To be honest, I wasn't really a huge follower of Doctor Who before I got this part. I mean I knew it was huge, but … I was nothing like my mum, who's a proper diehard Whovian. She's got a Tardis money-bag, and Dalek bubble-bath. But having read the first episode I was utterly smitten, and with the character. Amy's a sassy lady, funny and passionate, and her relationship with the doctor has a really interesting dynamic."
"I am legitimately Scottish. I can officially say — yes. Yeah, I am from Inverness in the Highlands of Scotland."
"He's just really unlikely as a hero — which makes him so brilliant, I think, because he's like this mad professor."
"I was a little worried that I was going to look like an overgrown fetus … Maybe that’s true. But it’s liberating. It’s very liberating. Everyone here should shave their heads."
"We saw some amazing actresses for this part. But when Karen came through the door, the game was up — she was funny, clever, gorgeous and sexy. Or Scottish, which is the quick way of saying it. A generation of little girls will want to be her. And a generation of little boys will want them to be her too."
"We knew Karen was perfect for the role the moment we saw her. She brought an energy and excitement to the part that was just fantastic."
"Words of affection, howsoe'er express'd, The latest spoken still are deem'd the best."
"Think'st thou there are no serpents in the world But those who slide along the grassy sod, And sting the luckless foot that presses them? There are who in the path of social life Do bask their spotted skins in Fortune's sun, And sting the soul."
"A willing heart adds feather to the heel, And makes the clown a winged Mercury."
"Sweet sleep be with us, one and all! And if upon its stillness fall The visions of a busy brain, We'll have our pleasure o'er again, To warm the heart, to charm the sight, Gay dreams to all! good night, good night."
"Oh, swiftly glides the bonnie boat, Just parted from the shore, And to the fisher's chorus-note, Soft moves the dipping oar!"
"The tyrant now Trusts not to men: nightly within his chamber The watch-dog guards his couch, the only friend He now dare trust."
"The hushed winds wail with feeble moan Like infant charity."
"The brave man is not he who feels no fear, For that were stupid and irrational; But he, whose noble soul its fear subdues, And bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from."
"Some men are born to feast, and not to fight; Whose sluggish minds, e'en in fair honor's field, Still on their dinner turn— Let such pot-boiling varlets stay at home, And wield a flesh-hook rather than a sword."
"But woman's grief is like a summer storm, Short as it violent is."
"I think about toilets a lot, and how awful it must be to be a toilet."
"Lies are easy to believe in but the truth sounds false."
"The sum of the rivals is constant."
"God for all anyone knows could be Cary Grant."
"Irene the Slut sits on top of the television, the atmosphere of Russian vodka about her skin."
"I fell in love with money before I had any and it’s a myth that the best romances end in heartbreak."
"A sinning nun, her face in a plate of cakes, caught my eye as I descended on the moving stair."
"Writing is hard work. Even when you start with the raw ingredients – a mad family, a sense of humour, talent…it’s hard work. But you do get to sit around in silk pyjamas all day."
"I read Wuthering Heights when I was seven. I stole a copy from the library. We weren’t allowed books in the house because they’re ‘dirty and dusty’. My mum had a shelf of fake leather books which my dad used to hide whisky behind. I used to die of embarrassment every time a visitor tried to pick up a book and realized it was fake. The library was forbidden so it became exotic and sexy in my imagination. I was dying to get in there and read a book!"
"I wouldn’t want to be labelled a Woman Writer even though I’m definitely not a man. And I think Scottish Writer has some unfortunate associations. Last century when I was commissioned to write my first novel, Scottish writers were being bullied by a purple nosed publisher to write in dialect. Well my voice is authentically Scottish. I’m an educated Scottish person who escaped. My voice is as valid as a whiny cunt who lives in a council flat and doesn’t quite speak English. That doesn’t mean I have to sound like Evelyn Waugh either. I’d like to be called a Good Writer. To quote a review on Amazon, "Carole Morin is a Fucking Genius. Fact." Fucking Genius will do."
"It’s all real. It came out of my head. Everything in there is real. Even the things invented and imagined."
"Writing is prophesy. Don’t write anything unless you want it to come true."
"Writing things down is dangerous. Ink can’t be erased without leaving a mess behind."
"Betrayal is a cliché … Lies are so suburban. But murder is nice and clean."
"God isn’t in the details, He’s in the structure."
"I wanted to wake up with a new name, a new hair colour, and almost the same heart."
"Imagination is all we have in the end."
"Characters in novels are all fiction like the world they live in. Of course Vivien Lash has things in common with me but if she actually was me I wouldn’t have been able to invent her. And I’m not plotting to murder my husband! The closest connection between me and my characters is that we live in a city that’s recognisable as London, but it’s a version of London that came out of my head."
"Murder and sex are both Dionysian. Creative work is first anarchic; and then it’s structured. It’s right brain then left brain. Anarchic then controlled. To be a really good writer, you have to be able to do both. It’s hard work and it takes longer than murder or sex."
"I like being described as "Sylvia Plath with a sense of humour." But I wouldn’t marry Ted Hughes. He’s dead for one thing."
"Books were banned from my house, my mum thought they were ‘germ traps’, so I was always sneaking into the library, hiding under a big plant; reading. I was escaping into another world as well as finding out stuff that was news to me."
"There’s a theory that if you have an interesting childhood then you have enough material to last a lifetime. But that implies that art is always autobiographical when reinvention and imagination are the most important elements. But it doesn’t hurt to have a mad family! Of course I didn’t notice until I’d escaped – when I left home as a teenager on a diplomatic scholarship – how odd my family were."
"Life-affirming people are a bit creepy and self-consciously life-affirming art is usually awful. My books tend to have happy endings, or at least that’s one way of reading them. My characters are exuberant and funny as well as dark. Duality is the essence of my voice so it’s appropriate for me to have an evil twin to blame things on."
"Carole Morin has enough autobiography to last her a lifetime. 90 per cent of it comprises Dead Glamorous — or at least the 90 per cent she claims to be true. The rest is obfuscation and exaggeration, designed to give her already improbable tale the sheen of some glorious myth."
"With her ‘grotesque gallery’ of relatives I wonder why she even bothers to make things up."
"The best way to get the better of temptation is just to yield to it."
"Up the Noran Water In by Inglismaddy, Annie's got a bairnie That hasna got a daddy. Some say it's Tammas's An' some say it's Chay's; An' naebody expec'it it, Wi' Annie's quiet ways."
"This man set the flame of his native genius under the cumbering whin of the untilled field; Lit a fire in the Mearns to illumine Scotland, clearing the sullen soil for a richer yield."
"Sae smoor yersel', my man, Pit oot yer licht, Grey hair that's tow To a lassie's lowe Is an unco sicht."
"Laughter and gibes and scorn they brave for her: their pounds, their silver, and their pence they give; their time, their talent and their youth for her that she may live."
"They agonise in sordid tenements, with children stabled worse than sheep or kye. O, how can grace or peace or health abide such poverty?"
"I mind o' the Ponnage Pule On a shinin' mornin', The saumon fishers Nettin' the bonny brutes — I' the slithery dark o' the boddom O' Charon's Coble Ae day I'll faddom my doots."
"But where this passionate self will go, God knows, Who knows whence the lightning comes, and whither it goes."
"While I am not teetotal, a drunk woman I find revolting and Burns orgies detestable."
"Criticism in Scotland, of books as well as plays, is often bedevilled because we all know each other too well. The clique can cast its chill over its rivals; the claque delude with false praise."
"I am not asked out to drinking parties and have never been in a Rose Street pub. I can't be a poet."
"I mind o' the Ponnage Pool, The reid brae risin', Morphie Lade, An' the saumon that louped the dam, A tree i' Martin's Den Wi' names carved on it; But I ken na wha I am."
"Bide the storm ye canna hinder, Mindin’ through the strife, Hoo the luntin’ lowe o’ beauty Lichts the grey o’ life."
"The man that mates wi’ Poverty An’ clasps her tae his banes, Will faither lean an’ lively thochts, A host o’ eident weans."
"Under an arch o’ bramble Saftly she goes, Dark broon een like velvet, Cheeks like the rose."
"For me it was a lot of fun. It was exciting. There were lots of people who came to stay from different parts of the world. You would come down in the morning and there would be different bodies on the floor or on the sofa. There would be Party socials in the house where people would sing songs and recite poems. It was a very social upbringing…"
"I like the idea that stories are active, that if you stepped on them they would become alive, like plants, and that the same memory can grow new shoots and flowers, and can change over the course of people’s lives…"
"I found that being pregnant was different from how I thought it would be…It shares a lot in common with writing in a way. You have an imaginary version of yourself pregnant, and an imaginary baby, an imaginary idea of yourself as a mother…"
"Even though there’s a massive amount of people of colour now living in Scotland…this country is 30 or 40 years behind any other English city in terms of racial attitudes and integration. There’s no proper acknowledgement of the slave trade and how many Scottish cities were founded on money from that. Our children are just not taught that history."
"You must master the vices. You know that if a thing is worth doing it's worth doing well. If, however, a thing is not worth doing then it's worth doing fabulously, amazingly, with grace, style and panache.”"
"She had given love and received only adoration: and love is so much bigger a thing than adoration — more complex and terrible. At its absolute moments it holds resolved within itself all impulses and inconsistencies, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, the spirit's agonizing."
"Light still lingered in the sky; the hills, that had been dissolved in its splendour, like floating shapes of light themselves, grew dark again."
"The Cairngorm Mountains are a mass of granite thrust up through the schists and gneiss that form the lower surrounding hills, planed down by the ice cap, and split, shattered and scooped by frost, glaciers, and the strength of running water. Their physiognomy is in the geography books—so many square miles of area, so many lochs, so many summits of over 4000 feet—but this is a pallid simulacrum of their reality, which, like every reality that matters to human beings, is a reality of the mind."
"Nan Shepherd was a leading writer of the Scottish Literary Renaissance, an interwar modernist movement which rejected sentimental stereotypes of Scottish rural life and embraced international avant-garde aesthetics. Her writing is defined by fascination with rural communities, the realities of women's lives, and the allure and mystery of the living world."
"Her last book, The Living Mountain, was written in the years towards the end and after the second war, but it was not published until 1977. This volume celebrated the experience of climbing and hill-walking in the Cairngorms, one of Nan Shepherd’s life-long pleasures, and here, as in her poems, it is possible to identify the passionately metaphysical strain that underlies her creative prose and her sense of the nature of existence itself."
"Now we sat in silence over the prawns and cheese, listening to them arguing. She was telling him The Sunday Times was investigating a tip that he had dodged a driving ban for speeding by pretending she had been at the wheel. He was telling her to keep her mouth shut. The recording finished and she switched off the machine, looking up expectantly."
"As the owner of a little place on the Isle of Wight, I should declare an interest. Some 80 per cent of properties in my seaside village are second homes, making it difficult for local shops to survive the winter."
"In a sign of national disapproval, Mr. Johnson was greeted with boos and jeers at the Platinum Jubilee service on Friday. It's not that a Conservative politician being booed is rare; in fact, it's quite common. It's that such a thing is not supposed to happen to him."
"Reform is also thinking long-term. The party wants to seize this moment of peak Tory unpopularity (few prime ministers have seen approval ratings as low as [[Rishi Sunak|[Rishi] Sunak]] has now) and use it for a realignment of politics. Its real focus is the election after the next one, when it hopes a shake-up of the two-party system could take place. Just as the SDP-Liberal Alliance split the left in the 1980s, Reform may split the right now."
"Some candidates describe themselves as feeling numb over the result. Others are simply angry they were put in this position – made to fight an election they thought was a bad idea. It's not just the 'big names' who have lost their seats, it's the losses in areas that have been Conservative for 100 years, such as Chichester. Then there’s Reform gains in former Tory strongholds such as Great Yarmouth. It means the recriminations are well under way."
"... by looking at autistic women I admired I began to realize that an autistic brain could provide an escape route from the traditional paths laid out for women."
"Autistic women have an almost childlike sense of injustice, meaning they are also often ahead of the curve in pushing feminist interests forward."
"... I would rather be an autistic woman than a neurotypical one. I always felt like women seem to look left and right at what other women are doing and are influenced by their peers. If I’d have been more influenced by my peers, I don’t know what I would have ended up doing."
"There's not enough talk of how weird neurotypicals are."
"We crazed for you, aspired and fell for you; Over us trod Desire, with feet of fire. Ah! the sad stories we would tell for you, Full of dark nights and sighing While—you were dying, Chrysola!Roundels and all rich rimes we rang for you; How from the plangent lyre pled our Desire! But the musicians vainly sang for you;— Through the dear music, crying That—you were dying, Chrysola!High on the golden throne love wrought for you With eyes enthrall’d of rest, tired of our best; You sat unheeding while we fought for you Glaive unto glaive replying; For—you were dying, Chrysola!Frenzied from out the jousts we came to you; ‘Can we love more, Dream-fast? Crown, then, at last.’ But love and hate were one dim flame to you; Strange things you smiled us—dying, O! You were dying, Chrysola!Great spoils of frankincense we burn’d for you, Round your death-chamber proud—then cursed aloud Christian or Pagan god that yearn’d for you, Till you were undenying.— O Dream undying, Chrysola!"
"As a dancer dancing in a shower of roses before her King (A dreamer dark, the King) Throws back her head like a wind-loved flower, and makes her cymbals ring (O’er her lit eyes they ring); As a fair white dancer strange of heart, and crown’d and shod with gold, My soul exults before the Art, the magian Art of old."
"‘Who are you that so strangely woke, And raised a fine hand?’ Poverty wears a scarlet cloke In my land.‘Duchies of dreamland, emerald, rose Lie at your command?’ Poverty like a princess goes In my land.‘Wherefore the mask of silken lace Tied with a golden band?’ Poverty walks with wanton grace In my land.‘Why do you softly, richly speak Rhythm so sweetly-scanned?’ Poverty hath the Gaelic and Greek In my land.‘There’s a far-off scent about you seems Born in Samarkand.’ Poverty hath luxurious dreams In my land.‘You have wounds that like passion-flowers you hide: I cannot understand.’ Poverty hath one name with Pride In my land.‘Oh! Will you draw your last sad breath ’Mid bitter bent and sand?’ Poverty begs from none but Death In my land."
"O ye that look on Ecstasy The Dancer lone and white, Cover your charmèd eyes, for she Is Death’s own acolyte. She dances on the moonstone floors Against the jewelled peacock doors: The roses flame in her gold hair, The tired sad lids are overfair. All ye that look on Ecstasy The Dancer lone and white, Cover your dreaming eyes, lest she— (Oh! softly, strangely!)—float you through These doors all bronze and green and blue Into the Bourg of Night."
"The Rose of the World hangs high on a thorny Tree. Whoso would gather must harrow his hands and feet. But oh! It is sweet.The leaves that drop like blood from the thorny Tree Redden the roads of the earth from East to West. They lie in my breast.O Rose, O Rose of the World, bow down to me Who can cleave no more, so pierced are my hands and feet. For oh! Thou art sweet."
"My mother bids me bind my hair With bands of rosy hue, Tie up my sleeves with ribbons rare, And lace my bodice blue."
"I have found that men, in all other ways admirable, have insisted upon flattery, upon extreme tact, upon suppression of opinion, in short, upon the sort of extreme and conscious consideration one shows to children or to persons suffering from nervous ailments."
"We shall be disposed to acknowledge that woman's influence has been sufficient to obtain her justice, when it has obtained for her ... perfectly just and equal rights with the other sex. When this is the case, we shall expect to see each woman wakened up into a sense of her individual responsibilities and duties: finding herself no longer classed with children and idiots, we may reasonably expect to see her rousing herself up, and applying, with renewed energy, to all her duties ..."
"No pure and noble-minded woman can long love affectionately, and submit passively to, a vicious and dissipated, — or even to a good and virtuous tyrant, — without having her own mind greatly deteriorated."
"To leave the liberty of one-half of the human race at the mercy of the convenience of the other, amounts to an annihilation of the rights of that half."
"... are puddings and pies, roasting and boiling, dusting and washing, or even the rearing and educating her children, so entirely to engross her attention, that her heart and mind can never expand beyond her own little domestic circle? Nay, if her mind never does so expand, will she be able properly to regulate the concerns even of that little circle?"
"The grand plea for woman sharing with man all the advantages of education is, that every rational being is worthy of cultivation, for his or her own individual sake. The first object in the education of every mind ought to be its own development."
"... the influence of woman — where any freedom of social intercourse is allowed between the sexes — is highly favourable to civilisation. She advances refinement and civilisation, and is, in turn, advanced by them."
"... if we take politics in the large and high sense in which it stands for patriotism and philanthropy, the assertion that an interest in it is out of place in the breast of the very gentlest of her sex, — in other words, that it is improper and unbecoming in a woman to take a deep interest in the affairs of her country and of humanity, — is made with more boldness and confidence, than regard to reason and truth."
"In the gloaming, oh, my darling! When the lights are dim and low, And the quiet shadows, falling, Softly come and softly go."