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Flora Thompson Quotes

1876–1947 England

Flora Jane Thompson (December 5 1876 – May 21 1947) was an English author and poet, most well-known for her semi-autobiographical trilogy, Lark Rise to Candleford and her posthumously published novel Still Glides the Stream.

England
Authors
Deaths
Essayists
Non-fiction authors

Also known as: Thompson, Flora

Random Flora Thompson quote

28 quotes

Unlike most great talkers, the rooks are good workers, too.

Nature knows no calendar, the seasons move in a circle.

Any artwork needs time and patience and needs above all a quiet mind.

We cannot bring the good old days back but, if we must eat mass-made foods, get laws passed to insist upon its goodness and purity.

It was ordained that our earthly pilgrammage should be a struggle, and life would be a tame affair if everything went smoothly.

"Coming events cast their shadows before" quoted the clergyman...

Words as to the inner emotions do not come readily to me, for I have led an isolated life mentally and spiritually.

Some great poet or philosopher once said that " he who goes to nature for comfort must go to her empty handed " , and I think he was right.

Special qualities are required of the essayist. A poem or a novel may spring from the inner consciousness of an author.. reasoning powers must be brought to reinforce imagination.

"I don't believe in folks making a sort of mystery of themselves. I believe in being neighbourly , I do".

Alas! in nature, as in art, we gain only according to our capacity. You cannot put an ocean in a pint pot.

They didn't want votes, either. A vote wasn't going to raise wages or make bread cheaper. What did it matter to them what Government was in power.

The children did not remain children long. Boys of seven or eight went to work in the fields... Girl children of ten or eleven sent out into service...

Our poet's singing lips are dumb:
This his last gift, to us has brought
The pain pressed vintage of his thought
His life of song, his life of pain,
And, being dead, he speaks again.

I do not compare the past with the present without a prejudice for either, but, great as the improvement in country life is in many respects, it seems a pity the old cheap, wholesome dishes have gone to make way for tinned and preserved foods.

The harvest-home or supper is a thing of the past. To those who feel the fascination of the past this may appear sad, but it is not so really for, even while it existed, this surface goodwill was often an empty show.

Pale purple as the bloom on a ripe plum, veined with the gold of late flowering gorse, set with small slender birches, just turning yellow, with red-berried rowans and thicket of bracken, the heath lay steeped in sunshine.

Other days, other ways! For myself I would desire a combination of old romance and modern machinery. No housewife would wish to the return to the era when everything, had to be made at home by candlelight and which lost to us who knows how many women poets and painters!

and so the shadows ripple on
until it's time to part

Shallows- a poem in the anthology Bog Myrtle & Peat (1921)

It is the fashion to talk of our changing climate and bewail the hot summers and hard winters of tradition, but how seldom we pause to marvel at the remarkable constancy of the weather from year to year.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Flora Thompson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.