Rose Macaulay

Love is a disease. But curable.

— Rose Macaulay

When I have eaten mangoes, I have felt like Eve.

— Rose Macaulay

Nearly all novels are too long.

— Rose Macaulay

Love's a disease. But curable.

— Rose Macaulay

Never approach a friend's wife or girlfriend with mischief as your goal... unless she's really attractive.

— Rose Macaulay

It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.

— Rose Macaulay

Giving is not at all interesting; but receiving is, there is no doubt about it, delightful.

— Rose Macaulay

God very seldom succeeds. He has very nearly everything against him, of course.

— Rose Macaulay

Why is humanity so excessive in the way it does things? The golden mean seems out of fashion.

— Rose Macaulay

the position of women, that sad and well-nigh universal blot on civilizations, was never far from her mind.

— Rose Macaulay

One never feels such distaste for one's countrymen and countrywomen as when one meets them abroad.

— Rose Macaulay

To be prejudiced is the privilege of the thinking human being. ... The open mind is the empty mind.

— Rose Macaulay

As to the family, I have never understood how that fits in with the other ideals -- or, indeed, why it should…

— Rose Macaulay

Still I sojourn here, alone and palely loitering, though the sedge is withered from the lake and no birds sing. For I…

— Rose Macaulay

Publishers of course have you altogether in their grip; if they say you must do a thing you have jolly well got…

— Rose Macaulay

Only one hour in a day is more pleasurable than the hour spent in bed with a book before going to sleep,…

— Rose Macaulay

what about Christianity? Are we right in the face of so long a record of its poverty in international achievement, to keep…

— Rose Macaulay

The superior thing ... was to be late. Lateness showed that serene contempt for the illusion we call time which is so…

— Rose Macaulay

Women have one great advantage over men. It is commonly thought that if they marry they have done enough, and need career…

— Rose Macaulay

miss my daily Mass, and have a superstitious feeling that anything may happen on the days I don't go. However, nothing in…

— Rose Macaulay

[Religion is a] primitive insurance against disaster. ... Originally religion was merely a function of the self-preservative instinct. Offer sacrifices to the…

— Rose Macaulay

As to the family, I have never understood how that fits in with the other ideals --or, indeed, why it should be…

— Rose Macaulay

One day I shall write a little book of conduct myself, and I shall call it Social Problems of the Unsociable. And…

— Rose Macaulay

“I can't think, if people want gods, why not the Greek ones; they were so useful in emergencies, and such enterprising and…

— Rose Macaulay

Cruelty was the devil, and most people were, in one way or another, cruel. Tyranny, suppression, persecution, torture, slavery, war, neglect -…

— Rose Macaulay

Traveling together is a great test, which has damaged many friendships and even honeymoons, and some people such as [Thomas] Gray and…

— Rose Macaulay

Once learnt, this business of cooking was to prove an ever growing burden. It scarcely bears thinking about, the time and labour…

— Rose Macaulay

Words move, turning over like tumbling clowns; like certain books and like fleas, they possess activity. All men equally have the right…

— Rose Macaulay

“But how true it is that every pleasure has also its reverse side, in brief, its pain. Or, if not wholly true,…

— Rose Macaulay

The ascendancy over men's minds of the ruins of the stupendous past, the past of history, legend and myth, at once factual…

— Rose Macaulay

How far does one combine resistance to over-control with social justice, i.e. tolerable living for people in general? We are too selfish…

— Rose Macaulay

“...when the years have all passed, there will gape the uncomfortable and unpredictable dark void of death, and into this I shall…

— Rose Macaulay

It is a common delusion that you make things better by talking about them.

— Rose Macaulay

One could do with a longer year - so much to do, so little done, alas.

— Rose Macaulay

Human passions against eternal laws -- that is the everlasting conflict.

— Rose Macaulay

The impulse to ask questions is among the more primitive human lusts.

— Rose Macaulay

It was a book to kill time for those who like it better dead.

— Rose Macaulay

You should always believe what you read in the newspapers, for that makes them more interesting.

— Rose Macaulay

The great and recurrent question about Abroad is, is it worth the trouble of getting there?

— Rose Macaulay

Take my camel, dear,' said my aunt Dot, climbing down from that animal on her return from high Mass.

— Rose Macaulay