Jan Struther

O love's a simple word to sayWith nature aiding and abetting

— Jan Struther

It's as important to marry the right life as it is the right person.

— Jan Struther

And I am a mockery, who was God before.

— Jan Struther

One is what one remembers: no more, no less.

— Jan Struther

The blessed drink of early morning tea.

— Jan Struther

To be entirely at leisure for one day is to be for one day an immortal

— Jan Struther

It's just as important to marry the right life as the right person.

— Jan Struther

Punctuality is the thief of adventure.

— Jan Struther

The worst of gardening is that it's so full of metaphors one hardly knows where to begin.

— Jan Struther

[Gardening] is a means by which you can attain many valuable hours of solitude without being thought unsociable.

— Jan Struther

how much of the fun of parenthood lay in watching the children remake, with delighted wonder, one's own discoveries.

— Jan Struther

to achieve unity without uniformity is the whole essence of the democratic way of life.

— Jan Struther

Giving a party is like having a baby: its conception is more fun than its completion; and once you have begun it,…

— Jan Struther

“...[Y]ou cannot successfully navigate the future unless you keep always framed beside it a small clear image of the past.”

— Jan Struther

It took me forty years on earth To reach this sure conclusion: There is no Heaven but clarity, No Hell except confusion.

— Jan Struther

In childhood the daylight always fails too soon -- except when there are going to be fireworks;

— Jan Struther

When there is a world scarcity of any commodity, whether it's food or free speech, then the whole world must go on…

— Jan Struther

Nature has decreed that for what men suffer by having to shave, be killed in battle, and eat the legs of chickens,…

— Jan Struther

“This was the cream of marriage, this nightly turning out of the day's pocketful of memories, this deft habitual sharing of two…

— Jan Struther

“That's what any decent mind ought to do for its owner when she lets it off the leash - just go bounding…

— Jan Struther

Not that she didn't enjoy the holidays: but she always felt-and it was, perhaps, the measure of her peculiar happiness-a little relieved…

— Jan Struther

“It was more like a form of claustrophobia -- a dread of exchanging the freedom of her own self-imposed routine for the…

— Jan Struther

I can't abide cats myself, but of course we have to have one in the kitchen to deal with the mice. I…

— Jan Struther

It seemed to her sometimes that the most important thing about marriage was not a home or children or a remedy against…

— Jan Struther

there is practically no difference at all between a family and a nation, except the difference in size. A family is a…

— Jan Struther

A single person is a manageable entity, whom you can either make friends with or leave alone. But half of a married…

— Jan Struther

It oughtn't to need a war to make us talk to each other in buses, and invent our own amusements in the…

— Jan Struther

There was one bursting now, a delicate constellation of many-coloured stars which drifted down and lingered in the still air… The final…

— Jan Struther

However long the horror continued, one must not get to the stage of refusing to think about it. To shrink from direct…

— Jan Struther

“...[F]ireworks had for her a direct and magical appeal. Their attraction was more complex than that of any other form of art.…

— Jan Struther

Scots are born exiles, and Scotland the perfect country to be exiled from. Do not imagine that I am running down Scotland.…

— Jan Struther

“Mrs. Miniver suddenly understood why she was enjoying the forties so much better than she had enjoyed the thirties: it was the…

— Jan Struther

“The fact that we are now crusaders needn't blind us to the fact that for a very long time we have been,…

— Jan Struther

“[M]rs. Miniver was beginning to feel more than a little weary of exchanging ideas (especially political ones) and of hearing other people…

— Jan Struther

“For really it was the refinement of civilized cruelty, this spick, span, and ingenious affair of shining leather and gleaming steel, which…

— Jan Struther

“Left wing...Right wing...it's so limited; why doesn't it ever occur to any of them that what one is really longing for is…

— Jan Struther

swans ... always look as though they'd just been reading their own fan-mail.

— Jan Struther

“...[T]he mechanics of life should never be allowed to interfere with living.”

— Jan Struther

The importance of the ordinary citizen is very greatly underestimated - not so much by those in authority as by the ordinary…

— Jan Struther

librarianship is one of the few callings in the world for which is it still possible to feel unqualified admiration and respect.

— Jan Struther