Flora Thompson Quotes

And so with us, she thought. We come, we go, and, as individuals, we are forgotten. But the stream of human life goes on, ever changing, but ever the same, and as the stream is fed by well-springs hoarded by Nature so the stream of humanity is fed by the store of accumulated wisdom and effort and hard-won experience of past generations.

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

A grasshopper shrilled in a tuft at her feet and was answered by other shrillings among the gorse bushes; a solitary rook flapped heavily overhead, and a pair of goldfinches twittered among the thistle-down; there was no other sound except the scarcely perceptible never-ceasing sighing of the wind in the pines and its rustling of acres of heath-bells.

Some kind of contact with earth, however second hand or muffled, is still a prime necessity of humankind. We each of us have our own particular earthly paradise, a spot on earth for which our thoughts turn while our bodies are far distant, as the one place in all the world we would rather be..

Now, with the glamour of the past upon them we are inclined to look back on old world festivities with regret and consider present day dances as a poor substitute for the old. From an artistic point of view, they maybe, but in individual freedom and independence of spirit they mark a stage upward.

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

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

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 a hard life, but, physically, they throve on it, the men standing up well to the hard labour of the fields and the women, in addition to their washing, scrubbing and cooking and nursing, bearing a child almost annually.

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.

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...

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

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

Other days, other ways; and, although they have now been greatly improved upon, the old country midwives did at least succeed in bringing into the world many generations of our forefathers, or where should we be now? <small>— (ch. 8, 'The Box' )</small>

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.