swans ... always look as though they'd just been reading their own fan-mail. Jan Struther More Quotes by Jan Struther More Quotes From Jan Struther Not that she didn't enjoy the holidays: but she always felt-and it was, perhaps, the measure of her peculiar happiness-a little relieved when they were over. Her normal life pleased her so well that she was half afraid to step out of its frame in case one day she should find herself unable to get back. Jan Struther holiday one-day happiness In childhood the daylight always fails too soon - except when there are going to be fireworks. Jan Struther daylight childhood failing For to love, loveless, is a bitter pill:But to be loved, unloving, bitterer still. Jan Struther loveless pills bitter Scots are born exiles, and Scotland the perfect country to be exiled from. Do not imagine that I am running down Scotland. Far from it. ... No, what I mean is that Scotland's beauties, though undeniable, are obvious ones, easy to carry in the heart, easy even to describe to the benighted members of less fortunate races. Lakes, islands and mountains, heather and rowan, broad straths and narrow glens - these are jewels easily worn in the memory. Jan Struther running memories country Things happen too quickly, crisis follows crisis, the soil of our minds is perpetually disturbed. Each of us, to relieve his feelings, broadcasts his own running commentary on the preposterous and bewildering events of the hour: and this, nowadays, is what passes for conversation. Jan Struther mind feelings running Private opinion creates public opinion. Public opinion overflows eventually into national behavior as things are arranged at present, can make or mar the world. That is why private opinion, and private behavior, and private conversation are so terrifyingly important. Jan Struther mars public-opinion important It took me forty years on earth To reach this sure conclusion: There is no Heaven but clarity, No Hell except confusion. Jan Struther confusion spiritual years The worst of gardening is that it's so full of metaphors one hardly knows where to begin. Jan Struther gardening metaphor worst [Gardening] is a means by which you can attain many valuable hours of solitude without being thought unsociable. Jan Struther gardening solitude mean to achieve unity without uniformity is the whole essence of the democratic way of life. Jan Struther unity essence way It oughtn't to need a war to make us talk to each other in buses, and invent our own amusements in the evenings, and live simply, and eat sparingly, and recover the use of our legs, and get up early enough to see the sun rise. Jan Struther up-early war civilization there is practically no difference at all between a family and a nation, except the difference in size. A family is a nation seen through the wrong end of a telescope; a nation is a family seen through the right end of a telescope, and I don't believe it is possible to achieve a happy and successful family life, or a happy and successful national life, unless we bear this simple fact in mind and behave accordingly. Jan Struther family successful believe When there is a world scarcity of any commodity, whether it's food or free speech, then the whole world must go on rations in order that eventually the whole world may have it again in plenty. Jan Struther scarcity speech order Physical weather certainly is beyond our control. ... But human weather - the psychological climate of the world - is not beyond our control. The human race is its own rain and its own sun. It creates its own cyclones and anti-cyclones. The ridges of high pressure which we sometimes enjoy, the troughs of low pressure which we so often endure, are of our own making and nobody else's. Jan Struther race rain weather One is what one remembers: no more, no less. Jan Struther identity self remember librarianship is one of the few callings in the world for which is it still possible to feel unqualified admiration and respect. Jan Struther admiration-and-respect calling world To be put down in this world, and given only eighty years to get to know it in, is like being let loose in the United States of America for the first time with a high-powered car and unlimited gasoline - but with a visa that is valid for only a week. It's agonizing, that's what it is. Jan Struther time life years However long the horror continued, one must not get to the stage of refusing to think about it. To shrink from direct pain was bad enough, but to shrink from vicarious pain was the ultimate cowardice. And whereas to conceal direct pain was a virtue, to conceal vicarious pain was a sin. Only by feeling it to the utmost, and by expressing it, could the rest of the world help to heal the injury which had caused it. Money, food, clothing, shelter - people could give all these and still it would not be enough; it would not absolve them from paying also, in full, the imponderable tribute of grief. Jan Struther pain grief thinking Constructive destruction is one of the most delightful employments in the world, and in civilized life the opportunities for it are only too rare. Jan Struther employment opportunity world She saw every personal religion as a pair of intersecting circles. . . . Probably perfection is reached when the area of the two outer crescents, added together, is exactly equal to that of the leaf-shaped piece in the middle. On paper there must be some neat mathematical formula for arriving at this; in life, none. Jan Struther women circles two
