Mary Butts Quotes

• There are two kinds of reading, reading which is contemplation - even a kind of vision & reading for information. For the first only the best will do, for the rest - then one can let in anything one would like to read in the world.

  Mary Butts

  Book, Reading, Two

  Mary Butts (2008). “The Journals of Mary Butts”, p.30, Yale University Press

  7 Copy quote

• Build a little fence of trust around today; Fill the space with loving deeds, and therein stay.

  Mary Butts

  Trust, Space, Deeds

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• Art is the god you have not seen.

  Mary Butts

  Art, Art Is

  Mary Butts (2008). “The Journals of Mary Butts”, p.1, Yale University Press

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• I cannot remember a time when I was not enraptured or tortured by words. Always there have been words which, sometimes for their sound alone, sometimes for their sound and sense, I would not use. From a loathing of their grossness or sickliness, their weight or want of weight. Their inexactitude, their feeling of acidity or insipidity. Their action, not only on the intelligence but on the nerves, was instant.

  Mary Butts

  Feelings, Loathing, Sound

  Mary Butts (1988). “The Crystal Cabinet: My Childhood at Salterns”, Beacon Press (MA)

  5 Copy quote

• Nature has a counterpart, a representation of every interior mood and obscure perception of man.

  Mary Butts

  Nature, Men, Perception

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• Not till the end of the war will there be any time for art or love or magic again. Perhaps never again.

  Mary Butts

  Art, War, Magic

  Mary Butts (2008). “The Journals of Mary Butts”, p.58, Yale University Press

  4 Copy quote

• The truth which may not be told, is the truth which cannot be told.

  Mary Butts

  Truth, May

  Mary Butts (1998). “Ashe of Rings, and Other Writings”, McPherson & Company

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• I am old enough to remember what it was like when the theories of Freud first escaped from the study and the clinic, and the great game of Hunt-the Complex began, to the entertainment and alarm of a war-shattered and disillusioned world.

  Mary Butts

  War, Games, Firsts

  4 Copy quote

• Armed with madness, I go on a long voyage.

  Mary Butts

  Long, Goes On, Voyages

  Mary Butts (1992). “The Taverner novels”, McPherson

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• If it is true that it is the simplicity of the Einsteinian formulae which constitutes their difficulty, that they are so obvious as to escape notice, it seems to me that this applies to events in life, numberless happenings, perhaps the basic ones, which we, saturated in detail and hurrying through subdivisions, lose sight of.

  Mary Butts

  Events In Life, Sight, Simplicity

  7 Copy quote

• I thought of my father's wisdom, as though it were buried in a box under a tree. As in the old song - a gold box with a silver pin. Some day I should be grown up, and I should dig up the box and turn the pin.

  Mary Butts

  Song, Father, Tree

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• Sink twice before you strike out for land.

  Mary Butts

  Perseverance, Land, Strikes

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• I blessed the power which has filled my life with poetry.

  Mary Butts

  Blessed, Poetry, Filled

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• Frog or pearl, life hid something at the bottom of the cup.

  Mary Butts

  Pearls, Frogs, Cups

  Mary Butts (1998). “Ashe of Rings, and Other Writings”, McPherson & Company

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• One should be allowed to choose one's burden.

  Mary Butts

  Trouble, Burden, Should

  Mary Butts (1998). “Ashe of Rings, and Other Writings”, McPherson & Company

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• It is in the nature of any effort to leave something serviceable behind it.

  Mary Butts

  Effort, Behinds

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• For watching death, and above all, after death; not death in battle, but death after battle, brings one to certain indifferences that are also a form of death.

  Mary Butts

  Battle, Indifference, Form

  4 Copy quote

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