Women Authors From England

"Curiosity needs food as much as any of us, and dies soon if denied it."

"Did Older and Wiser people ... ever shout and jump with joy in their pyjamas in the moonlight? Did they ever feel just drunk with being young, and in at the start? And were Older and Wiser people's jokes ever funny?"

"The fifth stone is a magic stone, my David, Made up of fear and failure, lies and loss."

"The more committees you belong to, the less of ordinary life you will understand. When your daily round becomes nothing more than a daily round of committees you might as well be dead."

"Glendinning's biography is unusual in including almost as much about Raffles's relatives and friends as about him. This is as it should be, as they were crucial to his career as well as to his happiness; especially his two wives, the vivacious , who died in 1814, and then the strong and resourceful , who bore him his children, and fanned his reputation, and her own, after Raffles's death."

"Beware of fair and painted talk, Beware of flattering tongues: The Mermaids do pretend no good For all their pleasant songs. Some use the tears of crocodiles, Contrary to their heart: And if they cannot always weep, They wet their cheeks by art."

"None of us wants to be average. That we are so is a melancholy fact borne in upon us in middle life, and we do not always relish it."

"All progress in knowledge takes place through the correction of that which has been received on authority, ... but without the huge body of traditional knowledge, accurate and inaccurate together, there would be nothing even to correct. Progress is not made in spite of authority, but by means of it."

"It was young David mocked the Philistine. It was young David laughed beside the river. There came his mother — his and yours and mine — With five smooth stones, and dropped them in his quiver."

"Reason cannot remain a bare intellectual faculty; it must become a faculty of judgment dealing with the question of values."

"The first stone is love, and that shall fail you. The second stone is hate, and that shall fail you. The third stone is knowledge, and that shall fail you. The fourth stone is prayer, and that shall fail you. The fifth stone shall not fail you."

"The letters to are Bowen's "writing" in the same way as her books and stories are. Readers of her fiction will find echoes and resonances. She told him with great freedom about how she writes, when she writes, what it feels like to be writing. When, late in life, she started on The Little Girls, she shared the process of creation with him as never before — even though The Heat of the Day, about love and betrayal in London during the war, is dedicated "To Charles Ritchie". If these were only love-letters, they would not be so valuable or extraordinary. Bowen is a natural and practised story-teller with a genius for evoking atmosphere. She can be wonderfully funny as well as deadly serious as she regales Ritchie with the minutiae of her life, whether in Ireland, England, Europe or America. She spills out, without inhibition, her opinions and prejudices."

"With his wife, he founded the . He had no idea when he married Virginia Stephen how her mental instability would determine and distort his own trajectory, nor that she would become one of the most famous English authors of the twentieth century. He knew how to love, and she was the love of his life. After came change and a . In his last decade, five volumes of autobiography won him respect and recognition. He left not only distinguished books on international relations, but also satirical squibs, a great mass of literary and political journalism, a play, poetry, short stories, and two novels."

"and , the principal family historians, both wrote that it was Mr Trollope's idea that should go to America. They may have been fudging the real issues here, just as they fudged the long association of Mrs Trollope with ."

"He cannot be seen as an Enlightenment figure. What we think of as eighteenth-century, in terms of architecture, furniture, painting and the decorative arts, came mostly after his heyday. He died in 1745 and was isolated by deafness and dementia from the late 1730s."

"... today even our s are presented at a Garden Court, followed by a more or less picnic on the lawn. All classes and ranks share in this taste ..."

"A picnic is the Englishman's grand gesture ..."

"Considerable difficulties, however, beset the way of 's biographer. Her life was so much bound up with her husband's career that to write an orthodox biography would merely be to repeat the story which has already been told with such fullness and brilliance by and ."

"It was at , and then at , that Georgina's literary career took wing. In 1943 her Charlotte Mary Yonge: the Story of an Uneventful Life was published. 's reputation as a writer was then at its nadir, and Georgina's book provoked a savage and contemptuous review by Mrs , but it was greeted with joy by a wide, though secret band of fans throughout the country, and led to a revival in Charlotte Yonge studies in university English literature departments, and to the foundation, a few years later, of the Charlotte Mary Yonge Society, an elite group of writers such as , and ."

"In 1920, , Edith, and Helen Rootham instituted the Anglo-French Poetry Society, largely as a platform for Mrs. Bennett's recitations."

"Lyra Innocentium was much valued by the devout, but it never attained to the world-wide popularity of ', and in some quarters it gave positive offence. ... Keble's chief reason for publishing Lyra Innocentium was his desire to raise money for the rebuilding of Hursley Church."

"It was the patrician in Vita that first fascinated Mrs Woolf. The aristocratic manner, she noted, was like an actress's ..."

"Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light, I have loved the stars too truly to be fearful of the night."

"Is it so, O Christ in heaven, that the highest suffer most? That the strongest wander farthest, and more hopelessly are lost? That the mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain, And the anguish of the singer makes the sweetness of the strain? — "I have many things to tell you, but ye cannot bear them now.""

"What, for us, are all distractions of men's fellowship and smiles? What, for us, the goddess Pleasure, with her meretricious wiles?"

"Every body about me seem'd happy—but every body seem'd in a hurry to be happy somewhere else."

"It requires genius to make a good pun—some men of bright parts can't reach it."

"His ardent looks—his sighs—his consusion—his respectful attentions, have a thousand times profess'd the strongest passion—Surely, a man cannot in honour, be exculpated, who by such methods defrauds a Woman of her heart."

"Secrets are pleasant to each child of Eve."

"Your great spirits are mere Jack-a-lanterns in the brain—they dance about, shine, and make vagaries—while those who possess happiness, soberly and quietly enjoy their treasure."

"Love has forc'd Heroes to forget their valour, and Philosophers their systems—no wonder he shou'd make a Woman forget her wrinkles."

"But what is Woman?—only one of Nature's agreeable blunders."

"If you have not the faith of assurance, practise at least the faith of adherence. That, at least, is in your own power. Cleave to God exactly as if you were certain of being accepted by Him at last; and thus, fulfilling his own conditions, you will be accepted by Him whether you are assured of it beforehand or not."

"Five minutes! Zounds! I have been five minutes too late all my life-time!"

"Vanity, like murder, will out."

"Reach me down my Tycho Brahé, — I would know him when we meet, When I share my later science, sitting humbly at his feet."

"All done, all fled, and now we faint and tire— The Feast is over and the lamps expire! ... All dim, all pale—so lift me on the pyre— The Feast is over and the lamps expire!"

"Trouble adds toil to grief."

"Moderation, the noblest gift of heaven."

"The black-winged Erinnys Will never enter those homes where the hands are lifted up in prayer, And the gods have accepted their offerings."

"Now there are many pleasures in life, Long conversations, and leisure, that delightful evil."

"The English have not by nature sufficient sociability in their dispositions to do without a visible fire. A cheerful blaze is necessary to thaw their innate shyness and reserve, and to form a central point of union. ... They cannot converse comfortably with their hands unemployed. Some excuse must be found for idleness; some reason for being in one part of the room in preference to another. The slightest appearance of formality terrifies them beyond measure, because it reminds them of their own defects. The same principle which makes a burnt child dread the fire, causes them to cling to it as an antidote. All manner of contrivances are employed to break the bug-bear form. In summer, ottomans, albums, and windows, supply in some measure the loss of the darling fire, and enable English men and women to try and talk to each other."

"The Egyptians possessed much interesting literature, of which poetry formed an important part. The hymns to , , and , and that of , are all beautiful specimens; and so, likewise, is the epic poem to , known as the ".""

"In Ireland, all is either brilliant sunshine or dark shadow, and its scenery, its skies, and the countenances of its genuine sons, are all either smiles or tears."

"But in the good there is every kind of wisdom."

"Occasionally, some tropical bird may perhaps be tempted north in search of food. Among these are the lovely little yellow-breasted s, which are met with in , and, I believe, have sometimes been seen as far north as . s are visitors on the Nile, and brilliant s, too, we saw in the , going to their more Northern homes in Syria, Spain, and Italy. The low sand banks in the river, or some lonely place in the desert, are nightly chosen as resting-places for the s, which are only travellers in the land."

"The , as it is sometimes called, lives in damp woods, where it can find plenty of insects. It catches them on the wing, as well as picking them off plants and trees. Its colouring is grey above with black streaks on its head; its breast is yellow, with a row of black marks across it, set like a ’s . Its song is louder than that of most s, but very sweet and clear."

"There are curious remains near Cairo of a , where portions of trees have been found measuring 60 to 90 feet in length and 3 feet in diameter. It is said to have been formed by a deposit of sand and water which in the course of ages petrified the wood. But although there is little doubt that primeval forests existed in Egypt, they must have disappeared at a very early date, as no special mention of them occurs, either in the oldest monuments or writings."

"' is a large genus of which one of the best known species is ', a destructive parasite of , but including also species parasitic on economically valuable trees, such as , and many s."

"The are remarkable for diversity of both form and function. Their ability to break down and to synthesize complex substances largely accounts for their success in colonizing widely different habitats, and has them of the greatest economic importance as parasites, as s in the soil and on varied commercial products, and as the producers of s, organic acids and other substances useful to man."