Phyllis Bentley Quotes

In every art the desire to practice it precedes both the full ability to do so and the possession of something worthwhile to express by its means.

It's a useful rule in Anglo-American communications that the English should double, and the Americans halve, the number of words they would normally employ.

My idea of marriage, as of every other partnership, ... is that each member shall contribute to it his or her personality, unrepressed and uncoerced. Thus, and only thus, we obtain the most complex synthesis possible, which may well surpass in beauty, as it surely does in interest and human value, the separate elements of such an association.

When one married a man, it was clear to me, one married also the sink and the stove.

your actions live after you till this globe is dissolved; they pass inevitably down as an inheritance from one generation to another. ... decency and integrity, courage and compassion, are always well worth while; they are not lost, but pass on down the generations; we are indeed the heirs of all the ages.

There are two roads to every place, and the wise man chooses the pleasant one.

These last years are as important as any that have gone before, nor will any other of our years vitiate or excuse them. The struggle continues.

Retracing the various episodes of one's life, one is disconcerted to discover that one was not as noble as one thought oneself at the time.