There are some women in whom conscience is so strongly developed that it leaves little room for anything else. Love is scarcely felt before duty rushes to encase it, anger impossible because one must always be calm and see both sides, pity evaporates in expedients, even grief is felt as a sort of bruised sense of injury, a resentment that one should have grief forced upon one when one has always acted for the best.
Sylvia Townsend WarnerIs it the realization that people recently psychoanalyzed tend to be dreadful bores which makes the U.S.A. army reject them for the draft?
Sylvia Townsend WarnerOne doesnโt become a witch to run around being helpful eitherโฆ. Itโs to escape all that โ to have a life of oneโs own, not an existence doled out to you by others, charitable refuse of their thoughts, so many ounces of stale bread of life a day.
Sylvia Townsend WarnerSpring is strictly sentimental, self-regarding; but I burn more careless in the autumn bonfire.
Sylvia Townsend WarnerThe night was at her disposal. She might walk back to Great Mop and arrive very late; or she might sleep out and not trouble to arrive till to-morrow. Whichever she did Mrs Leak would not mind. That was one of the advantages of dealing with witches; they do not mind if you are a little odd in your ways, frown if you are late for meals, fret if you are out all night, pry and commiserate when at length you return. Lovely to be with people who prefer their thoughts to yours, lovely to live at your own sweet will, lovely to sleep out all night!
Sylvia Townsend Warner