Mary Webb - Precious Bane (1924)

13 Sourced Quotes

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If you stop to be kind, you must swerve often from your path.

Mary Webb
The past is only the present become invisible and mute; and because it is invisible and mute, its memoried glances and it's murmurs are infinitely precious. We are tomorrow's past.

Mary Webb
I'd laboured over it a long while, and labour brings a thing near the heart's core.

Mary Webb
It made me gladsome to be getting some education, it being like a big window opening.

Mary Webb
So when folk tell me of this great man and that great man, I think to myself. Who was stinted of joy for his glory? How many old folk and children did his coach wheels go over? What bridal lacked his song, and what mourner his tears, that he found time to climb so high?

Mary Webb
I love you already, and if these things be done in the dry tree, what shall be done in the green?

Mary Webb
It's the folk that depend on us for this and for the other that we most do miss.

Mary Webb
I've thought since that when folk grumble about this and that and be not happy, it is not the fault of creation, that is like a vast mere full of good, but it is the fault of their bucket's smallness.

Mary Webb
That vivid present of theirs, how faint it grows! The past is only the present become invisible and mute, and because it is invisible and mute, its memoried glances and its murmurs are infinitely precious. We are to-morrow's past.

Mary Webb
Love was like that — a lot of coloured threads, and one master-thread of pure gold.

Mary Webb
It is the way of lovers to think that none can bless or succour their love but their own selves. And there is a touch of truth in it, maybe more than a touch.

Mary Webb
The more anybody wants a thing, the more they do think others want it.

Mary Webb
But when you dwell in a house you mislike, you will look out of a window a deal more than those that are content with their dwelling.

Mary Webb