Sylvia Townsend Warner

“My blood ran with this ink...”

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

One cannot revoke a true happiness.

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

Reason is a poor hand at prophecies.

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

And another day is tucked under my wing.

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

noise is a pollution.

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

Inflation is the senility of democracies.

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

Happiness is an immunity.

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

To think of losing is to lose already.

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

cooking is the most succulent of human pleasures.

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

Total grief is like a minefield. No knowing when one will touch the tripwire.

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

Of all damnable offenses preaching prudence to the young is the most damnable.

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

When I die, I hope to think I have annoyed a great many people.

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

The baby romped on my lap like a short stout salmon.

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

Belligerents always abolish war after a war.

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

But what are wishes, compared with longings?

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

Children driven good are apt to be driven mad.

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

[On an anarchist acquaintance:] Everything in appearance the most alarmist aunt could wish.

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

Spring is strictly sentimental, self-regarding; but I burn more careless in the autumn bonfire.

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

The Church has lost a great religious poet in me; but I have lost an infinity of fun in the church, so…

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

Sneezes ... always sound much louder to the sneezer than to the hearers. It is an acoustical peculiarity.

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

General de Gaulle is again pictured in our newspapers, looking as usual like an embattled codfish.

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

Love is the only real patriation, and without one's dear one sits in a dreary and boring exile.

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

In the morning I had decided that henceforth I only cared for easy loves. It is so degrading to have to persuade…

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

Nine people out of ten (in Germany and England, perhaps ten people) would rather wait for their rights than fight for their…

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

I feel domesticity just slipping off me. It is a choice. Either one can let it go or one can intensify it.…

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

Oh, I am all for singing. If I had had children I should have hounded them into choirs & choral societies, and…

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

Rouen shone in dark sunlight and a storm swept it away from my eyes and churned up the broad river with waves…

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

How dreadful it is that because of our wills we can never love anything without messing it around! We couldn’t even love…

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

To one who has led a virtuous life, to sin is the easiest thing in the world. No experience of unpleasant consequences…

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

We are also rather concerned about our moorhen who went mad while we were in Italy and began to build a nest…

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

... Rembrandt is not a painter at all. He is a creator, who creates his beings, three dimensional living beings, on a…

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

Those who spend their strength in field and factory would rather hear that their emancipation is bound to come than that it…

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

London life was very full and exciting [...] But in London there would be no greenhouse with a glossy tank, and no…

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

once, when I was a young lady and on a night express ... I was awakened by a man coming in from…

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

“It is only for a week or two that a broken chair or a door off its hinges is recognised for such.…

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

The night was at her disposal. She might walk back to Great Mop and arrive very late; or she might sleep out…

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

... the advantages of being a postman seemed more and more dubious. It is not a congenial profession for anyone who is…

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

“Sitting here, and thus, she had attained to a state which she could never have desired, not even conceived. And being so…

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

Theology, Mr. Fortune found, is a more accommodating subject than mathematics; its technique of exposition allows greater latitude. For instance when you…

— Sylvia Townsend Warner

“Mr. Arbuthnot certainly was not prepared for her response to his statement that February was a dangerous month. “It is,” answered Laura…

— Sylvia Townsend Warner