Skip to content

Portrait of Mary Butts

Mary Butts

(1890–1937) Novelist United Kingdom

25 quotes in 145 categories

Mary Butts was a novelist from the United Kingdom, best known for Heart Throbs: In Prose and Verse.

Quick Facts About Mary Butts

Born: December 13, 1890
Died: March 5, 1937
Nationality: United Kingdom
Profession: Novelist
Notable works: Heart Throbs: In Prose and Verse
Known for: The Crystal Cabinet: My Childhood at Salterns, Ashe of Rings, Scenes from the Life of Cleopatra, The Death of Felicity Taverner, Armed with Madness
Spouse: John Rodker

About Mary Butts

Mary Frances Butts, also Mary Rodker by marriage, was an English modernist writer. Her work found recognition in literary magazines such as The Bookman and The Little Review, as well as from fellow modernists, T. S. Eliot, H.D. and Bryher. After her death, her works fell into obscurity until they began to be republished in the 1980s.

Biography source: Wikipedia

Quotes by Mary Butts

One should be allowed to choose one's burden.

Burden

Image

There are two kinds of reading, reading which is contemplation - even a kind of vision & reading for information. For the…

Book

Image

“For some days before, as well as for some nights, Vincent had observed a shadow about the quays. First because it had…

1932

Image

If it is true that it is the simplicity of the Einsteinian formulae which constitutes their difficulty, that they are so obvious…

Details

Image

Not till the end of the war will there be any time for art or love or magic again. Perhaps never again.

Art

Image

It is in the nature of any effort to leave something serviceable behind it.

Behinds

Image

“the things you hate are only your body being knocked about by phenomena”

Image

I thought of my father's wisdom, as though it were buried in a box under a tree. As in the old song…

Adulthood

Image

“Like men of his kind, at cross-purposes with their purpose, there could be nothing fortuitous that happened to him.”

1932

Image

“She saw the skin pull under the driver's ears and knew that he was laughing.”

Detail

Image

I am old enough to remember what it was like when the theories of Freud first escaped from the study and the…

Alarms

Image

Frog or pearl, life hid something at the bottom of the cup.

Bottom

Image

Sink twice before you strike out for land.

Land

Image

Armed with madness, I go on a long voyage.

Goes on

Image

The truth which may not be told, is the truth which cannot be told.

May

Image

“He turned to her - his gesture a superb compound of relief, remorse, passionate candour and bewilderment touched with curiosity; confidence and…

Excuses

Image

“Every day he woke to the desire to take the world by the throat, and choke it. He had no illusion that…

1932

Image

Art is the god you have not seen.

Art

Image

“All night the earth and the heavens followed their usual arrangements. Stars passed: an immense tide hung over them. A silent sea…

Astronomy

Image

I cannot remember a time when I was not enraptured or tortured by words. Always there have been words which, sometimes for…

Action

Image

For watching death, and above all, after death; not death in battle, but death after battle, brings one to certain indifferences that…

After death

Image

Nature has a counterpart, a representation of every interior mood and obscure perception of man.

Counterparts

Image

“He turned his steel eyes at me. They hurt me, paralysed me, like the advancing lights of a car. I saw that…

1932

Image

Build a little fence of trust around today; Fill the space with loving deeds, and therein stay.

Deeds

Image

I blessed the power which has filled my life with poetry.

Blessed

Image