A Notable Woman Quotes

“I hate the feeling of restriction when people are here with me and hate the emptiness when they are gone, as though with them have gone opportunities I didn't use, things I never saw or understood that I should and could have understood. Like having a book in my possession that I didn't bother to read properly.”
― Jean Lucey Pratt, A Notable Woman: The Romantic Journals of Jean Lucey Pratt

“how sick I am of train and tube and bus filled with the world's workers! Oh dear Lord, make me more charitable and generous and loving. They do bore me these people. There they are, day in and day out on platforms, in carriages, in the streets, tramping, standing, sitting in crowds and crowds, moving all the time like one river there is no stopping - I cannot bear it! When much in London my dreams are always choked with these images.”
― Jean Lucey Pratt, A Notable Woman: The Romantic Journals of Jean Lucey Pratt

“Give me grace that I may live in truth, which is suspense, is adventure, movement, growth, uncertainty, risk and danger. I must not be afraid.”
― Jean Lucey Pratt, A Notable Woman: The Romantic Journals of Jean Lucey Pratt

“It is nice to have man around, however tiresome.”
― Jean Lucey Pratt, A Notable Woman: The Romantic Journals of Jean Lucey Pratt

“Xmas is forced on a reluctant and dignified nation by the shopkeepers and the press', says Shaw. Yet through the glut of food and tinsel, balloons, gifts and false snow something else struggles.”
― Jean Lucey Pratt, A Notable Woman: The Romantic Journals of Jean Lucey Pratt

“He bit his nails and gobbled his food and has a humiliating lust for cream cakes.”
― Jean Lucey Pratt, A Notable Woman: The Romantic Journals of Jean Lucey Pratt

“The Englishman’s approach to vulgarity is so clumsy that it makes it seem dirtier than it really is, but the Frenchman lifts it with a light, dexterous touch onto a plane of inimitable humour. To go to bed with Balzac is to know what one has missed all one’s life.”
― Jean Lucey Pratt, A Notable Woman: The Romantic Journals of Jean Lucey Pratt

“But you cannot aim at health, you cannot aim at beauty. But you can aim at the conditions which produce health and beauty.”
― Jean Lucey Pratt, A Notable Woman: The Romantic Journals of Jean Lucey Pratt

“myself. Mere satiation of physical desire would poison my mind and wound my heart beyond hope of healing. But to have no lover at all would be even worse. For then, being denied a normal woman’s experience, my mind would swell with obscene fancies and my heart would die. Those ghastly visions of the virtuous virgins – hard, bright acidular old age! No, before I can live I must go through the crucifixion of marriage; it”
― Jean Lucey Pratt, A Notable Woman: The Romantic Journals of Jean Lucey Pratt

“Their government is centralised, and so long as every member of the ruling party remains uncorrupt and lives up to their ideals I think they have every chance of success.”
― Jean Lucey Pratt, A Notable Woman: The Romantic Journals of Jean Lucey Pratt