Quotes from Dorothy Whipple

If we could be seen thinking, we would show blown bright one moment, dark the next, like embers; subject to every passing word and thought of our own or other people's, mostly other people's.

But Mrs. Brockington, old, alone, almost crippled by rheumatism, had faith and courage. She had more. She had a warm serenity, and when Ellen was with her, she almost had it too. For goodness is catching. Mrs. Brockington was further on the road Ellen wanted to travel, and because Mrs. Brockington had got there, Ellen felt she might get there too.

All those books, all those prayers and she had got nothing from them. When everything went well for her she had been able to pray, she couldn't now. There was such urgency in her present situation that until the pressure was removed she couldn't think about God. She hadn't the patience to pray. It was a shock to her. Surely God was for these times?

In the radiance and the silence, she ran on the vast expanse of hard, smooth sand, beside herself with joy. Ah, when you only have a holiday once in a while, what a happiness it is! Each golden minute had to be held and perfected before it was let go.

Marriage or no marriage, children or no children, life - the real life - is lived in the spirit, and I hold that the right education helps the spirit to maintain its own life, makes it independent of material prosperity or adversity. That is the ideal we strive for. To enrich the spirit, to enrich the personality.

She had learnt to wait for the changes and the help that life brings. Life is like the sea, sometimes you are in the trough of the wave, sometimes on the crest. When you are in the trough, you wait for the crest, and always, trough or crest, a mysterious tide bears you forward to an unseen, but certain shore. In

With love, you don't even need butter on your bread; without it, an elaborate feast is necessary to make you come to the table.

As is usual with the ignorant, long words had the fascination for both girls that obstacles on the road have for a bad driver; instead of avoiding them they ran into them.

Shyness in the young may be charming to look at but is painful to the one who suffers it.

Love is happy only when it is confident. When it is humble, it is full of pain and misgiving; there is hardly any happiness to be had out of it at all.

It matters to ourselves, of course, but it matters terribly to other people. Moral failure or spiritual failure or whatever you call it, makes such a vicious circle... It seems as if when we love people and they fall short, we retaliate by falling shorter ourselves. Children are like that. Adults have a fearful responsibility. When they fail to live up to what children expect of them, the children give up themselves. So each generation keeps failing the next.

A loved husband is the companion of companions, the supreme sharer, and a happy wife often sounds trivial when she is really sampling and enjoying their mutual and unique confidence. But in doing it, she largely loses her power of independent decision and action. She either brings her husband round to her way of thinking or goes over to his, and mostly she doesn't know or care which it is.

In the bosom of a family, nothing can be hidden. One might wish, when things are bad, to suffer unobserved, but in a family there is no chance of that.

It was awful to have no one belonging to you, and to belong to no one.

Each soul has its solace.

Good cooking is a form of benevolence. Molly gladly sacrificed a fine afternoon to give pleasure by a cake at tea-time. She would lay her afternoon and fresh air on the table with the cake and be rewarded by the glow of pleasure she felt when they enjoyed it.

Meanwhile, if these hours be dark at least do not let us sit deedless, like fools and fine gentlemen, thinking the common toil not good enough for us and beaten by the muddle; but rather let us work like good fellows trying by some dim candlelight to set our workshop ready against to-morrow's daylight. William Morris.

Why did some people have so much? And yet, compared with Lily, she herself must seem almost rich. Was it all like this? Did every one look with envy at the one above? Funny. And funny, too, that the thought of someone else being worse off than you were yourself should make you feel more cheerful.

Since Wilfrid had introduced her to H.G. Wells, Jane's life had been different. Her horizons had widened and extended incredibly. H.G. Wells was like wind blowing through her mind. She felt strong and exhilarated after reading him. It didn't matter whether she agreed with him or not. She wasn't sure that he ever pointed out any road that she could follow. It didn't matter. He made her want to get up and fight and go on.

Youth and enthusiasm can be fatiguing to those who have lost both.

She had never thought she would let a daughter of hers go away like this. But what could she do? Children grew up; they pleased themselves; they grew in power to go their own ways as you diminished in power to prevent them.

She was one of those, born not made, to whom walking in the country is a happiness in itself. She went from one interest to another, poking into streams, looking into banks and hedges for flowers and nests, loitering round farmyards....

Love has a dangerous way of simplifying, for the lovers, things that cannot be simplified. Lovers can rarely see why they cannot be allowed to love, to be together. Why not, they naively wonder, since nothing else matters?

I suppose all young men dream of making a fortune," she said. "But most of them come to be content to make a living.