Kingdoms of Elfin Quotes

“She was heavier than he expected - women always are.”
― Sylvia Townsend Warner, Kingdoms of Elfin

“Young people are careless of their virginity; one day they may have it and the next not.”
― Sylvia Townsend Warner, Kingdoms of Elfin

“She could never feel love for him. Love was what she felt for birds—a free gift, unrequired, unrequited, invulnerable.”
― Sylvia Townsend Warner, Kingdoms of Elfin

“Watching these happy beings for whom weeping was impossible, he had become incapable of grief; watching their inconsistencies, he had become incapable of knowing right from wrong; disregarded by them he had become incapable of disappointment.”
― Sylvia Townsend Warner, Kingdoms of Elfin

“He used his intellect as he used his legs: to carry him somewhere else. He studied astrology, astronomy, botany, chemistry, numerology, fortification, divination, organ building, metallurgy, medicine, perspective, the kabbala, toxicology, philosophy, and jurisprudence. He kept his interest in anatomy and did a dissection whenever he could get hold of a body. He learned Arabic, Catalan, Polish, Icelandic, Basque, Hungarian, Romany, and demotic Greek.”
― Sylvia Townsend Warner, Kingdoms of Elfin

“Wealth, if not a mere flash in the pan, compels the wealthy to become wealthier.”
― Sylvia Townsend Warner, Kingdoms of Elfin

“Members of the ruling class are unwilling to admit themselves mistaken.”
― Sylvia Townsend Warner, Kingdoms of Elfin

“Sir Maugre’s erudition was so wide that whatever anyone said reminded him of something that had no bearing on it.”
― Sylvia Townsend Warner, Kingdoms of Elfin

“Therefore, at some point or other of Sir Glamie’s pedigree an Elfin lady must have yielded to a mortal lover, and immortality, like the pox, has run in the family ever since.”
― Sylvia Townsend Warner, Kingdoms of Elfin

“But the overruling disconcertingness was to find himself unconcerned. It was as if some mysterious oil had been introduced into the workings of his mind. If a thought irked him, he thought of something else. If a project miscarried, a flooding serenity swept him beyond it. He lived a tranquil truant, dissociated from himself as though by a slight agreeable fever.”
― Sylvia Townsend Warner, Kingdoms of Elfin

“The fortune of his game had brought him fairies—but he had always known fairies were in the pack.”
― Sylvia Townsend Warner, Kingdoms of Elfin

“When I had exhausted our library I made several excursions—to Saint Andrew’s, to Oxford, to the German Universities—and read over the shoulders of mortal students. It was sometimes very trying not being able to turn the pages for myself, since I was a quicker reader than they; but invisibility had its drawbacks.”
― Sylvia Townsend Warner, Kingdoms of Elfin

“He had not been much of a poet, but poet enough for his love-sonnets and satires to weaken his lungs.”
― Sylvia Townsend Warner, Kingdoms of Elfin