Top 100 Townsend Quotes
#1. If war should break out between England and Japan, the latter would suffer much more than the former.
Townsend Harris
#3. Mrs. Ball has got a daughter who is a writer. I asked her how her daughter qualified to be one. Mrs. Ball said that her daughter was dropped on her head as a child and has been "a bit queer" ever since.
Sue Townsend
#4. It will be quite satisfactory if you open them gradually, as the circumstances may require; but the President assures you that this will not be the case if you make a treaty with England first.
Townsend Harris
#5. I know what that feels like. I know what it's like to care about someone so much they make you desperate.
M. Leighton
#6. I don't really go around feeling very Irish at all. I don't go to Irish pubs. I've lived so many places, and I'm still so curious about the bigger world. It's grand to be alive in a time when mobility is so accessible.
Stuart Townsend
#7. It's a poor bureaucrat who can't stall a good idea until even its sponsor is relieved to see it dead and officially buried.
Robert Townsend
#10. You are only young once. At the time it seems endless, and is gone in a flash; and then for a very long time you are old.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#11. I do think that books, good books, free you. They make you feel a citizen of the world and things like class, sex and age don't matter. They're the greatest leveler.
Sue Townsend
#13. A good leader needs to have a compass in his head and a bar of steel in his heart.
Robert Townsend
#14. If we are really going to learn from others, we must decide to fully obey.
Ed Townsend
#15. Pauline: "All under-fives are mad Adrian, you used to talk to the moon. You invited it to your birthday party and cried when it didn't turn up."
George: "When it went dark and the moon came up, you ran outside and threw a sausage roll at it!
Sue Townsend
#17. I'm not taking a chance. I feel like I can't breathe without you. I'm just doing what I need to do to survive. It's as simple as that."
"Then let me be your air," he says quietly.
M. Leighton
#18. When we are feeling at a loss in a poem, metaphor comes to the rescue. Metaphor is instructive, tactical, and interactive; it succeeds when its audience sees it as both strange and true. We need metaphor to make the error that allows us to reach beyond ourselves.
Ann Townsend
#19. Young people are careless of their virginity; one day they may have it and the next not.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#20. Understanding Scripture in a language other than the heart language in which we think and experience emotion is like trying to eat soup with a fork. You can get a little taste, but you cannot get nourished.
William Cameron Townsend
#21. Consultants are people who borrow your watch and tell you what time it is, and then walk off with the watch.
Robert Townsend
#22. all her thoughts slid together again like a pack of hounds that have picked up the scent.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#23. Life is simply better when we are with others, and worse when we are isolated. God designed us to be connected, and life breaks down when we are not.
John Townsend
#24. I never imagined when I began writing in the early 1960s I'd become professional and my life would be transformed.
Sue Townsend
#25. Japan and China are isolated and without intercourse with other countries; hence the President directed me to attend to or watch the state of affairs in China also.
Townsend Harris
#26. By means of steam one can go from California to Japan in eighteen days.
Townsend Harris
#27. [On an anarchist acquaintance:] Everything in appearance the most alarmist aunt could wish.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#28. The thing that kills me is all these bands that use huge words in their lyrics, 'I'm swimming in a vortex of apathy.' I'm like, 'What?' I don't walk up to a friend and go 'That's a stylin' looking vortex of apathy you've got there pal. I was swimming up a river of deceit myself.'
Devin Townsend
#30. Be the kind of person you want to be attracted to. You will find that you are less and less drawn to people with difficult character issues and more desirous to find people who are full of grace, safety, acceptance, and a hunger to grow.
John Townsend
#31. With directing, you always have three or four things constantly on the go. It's a tough industry and a tough time, particularly if you're doing things a little outside the box or independent features.
Stuart Townsend
#32. I have decided to keep a full journal, in the hope that my life will perhaps seem more interesting when it is written down.
Sue Townsend
#33. I became an insomniac, really, hardly slept at all, didn't even try to. And it's carried on. I hate to say I only need as much sleep as Mrs. Thatcher, but I can cope really well on five hours.
Sue Townsend
#34. In time of war steamships and improved arms are the most important things.
Townsend Harris
#35. Nine people out of ten (in Germany and England, perhaps ten people) would rather wait for their rights than fight for their rights.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#36. I always wanted to be Jo in 'Little Women.' She's a bit reckless and feckless, always getting into trouble like me. But I'm probably more like Madame Bovary.
Sue Townsend
#38. I must have been a very strange child. I was very pretentious. Like Adrian Mole.
Sue Townsend
#39. Those who spend their strength in field and factory would rather hear that their emancipation is bound to come than that it is something to be hazardously purchased by struggle and sacrifice.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#40. Two things are desired in order that intercourse may be had: First, that a minister or agent be allowed to reside at the capital. Second, that commerce between different countries be freely allowed.
Townsend Harris
#42. Most social problems could be helped or prevented if people had more money and practical advice.
Sue Townsend
#43. My dark secrets are life threatening. Pockets of unhappiness set in aspic that build and build. I have this primitive feeling that if something good happens, it is going to be followed by something bad. There is always a price to pay.
Sue Townsend
#44. Barry Kent's father looks like a big ape and has got more hair on the back of his hands than my father has got on his entire head.
Sue Townsend
#45. I was really educating myself on the environment, but I didn't realize it was so connected to politics, connected to globalization.
Stuart Townsend
#46. I wish you could see the two cats drowsing side by side in a Victorian nursing chair, their paws, their ears, their tails complementarily adjusted, their blue eyes blinking open on a single thought of when I shall remember it's their supper time. They might have been composed by Bach for two flutes.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#47. Your trouble is, you want to be happy all the time. You're fifty years old -- haven't you realized yet that most of the time most of us just trudge through life? Happy days are few and far between.
Sue Townsend
#48. When other helpers fail and comforts flee, when the senses decay and the mind moves in a narrower and narrower circle, when the grasshopper is a burden and the postman brings no letters, and even the Royal Family is no longer quite what it was, an obituary column stands fast.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#49. The President regards the Japanese as a brave people; but courage, though useful in time of war, is subordinate to knowledge of arts; hence, courage without such knowledge is not to be highly esteemed.
Townsend Harris
#50. I feel sorry for anybody who would let hate wrap them up. Ain't no such thing as I can hate anybody and hope to see God's face.
- Fannie Lou Townsend Hamer
Deborah Wiles
#51. You'd better close those lips before I'm tempted to kiss them and really give you something to be all hot and bothered about.
M. Leighton
#52. She had thrown away twenty years of her life like a handful of old rags, but the wind had blown them back again, and dressed her in the old uniform.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#53. Mrs O'Leary said, 'Tis the child I feel sorry for', and all the people looked up and saw me, so I looked especially sad, I expect the experience will give me a trauma at some stage in the future. I'm all right at the moment, but you never know.
Sue Townsend
#55. I think we take it for granted that if you are with your husband after 30 years, then he is the love of your life.
Sue Townsend
#59. Unless a man has considerable skill with and reliance in his weapon, he will not remain cool in the presence of dangerous game close by.
Townsend Whelen
#60. I do apologize for writing by hand - and so badly. I shall soon be like Helen Thomas, notoriously illegible. In her last letter only two words stood out plain: 'Blood pressure.' Subsequent research demonstrated that what she had actually written was 'Beloved friends.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#62. Possessiveness cannot accept; it cannot even strike a fair bargain; it has to confer.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#63. Can you suggest any suitable aspersions to spread abroad about Mrs. Thatcher? It is idle to suggest she has unnatural relations with Mrs. Barbara Castle; what is needed is something socially lower: that she eats asparagus with knife and fork, or serves instant mash potatoes.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#64. Unless you go before you go, you'll need to go while you're going.
Jim Townsend
#65. Rouen shone in dark sunlight and a storm swept it away from my eyes and churned up the broad river with waves which pounced up like cats as our train drew out of the arches of the bridge.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#66. The monarchy is finished. It was finished a while ago, but they're still making the corpses dance.
Sue Townsend
#67. The birds can fly, an' why can't I? Must we give in, says he with a grin, That the bluebird an' phoebe are smarter 'n we be?
John Townsend Trowbridge
#68. The tears of the young who go their way, last a day; But the grief is long of the old who stay.
John Townsend Trowbridge
#69. Nothing was true for long. In time, everything was deconstructed.
Sue Townsend
#70. It is best as one grows older to strip oneself of possessions, to shed oneself downward like a tree, to be almost wholly earth before one dies.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#71. Every time I start a new piece of work, I spend a long while under the duvet thinking I can't do it.
Sue Townsend
#72. He didn't try to take the net off its hinges with that header.
Andy Townsend
#73. The central message of the Bible is about God redeeming a humanity that is in trouble and suffering.
John Townsend
#74. Ibn Firnas was a polymath: a physician, a rather bad poet, the first to make glass from stones (quartz), a student of music, and inventor of some sort of metronome.
Lynn Townsend White Jr.
#77. 8.45 a.m. My mother is in the hospital grounds smoking a cigarette. She is looking old and haggard. All the debauchery is catching up with her.
Sue Townsend
#78. I've always been fascinated by totalitarian regimes. I'm not an admirer of them.
Sue Townsend
#79. Only two things are real to me: my love and my death. In between them, I merely exist as a scatter of senses.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#81. I wish I could be a grandmother. It is wanton extravagance to have had a youth with no one to tell of it to when one grows old.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#82. Democracy is not about one party dominating.
Ed Townsend
#83. I don't know why women are so mad about flowers. Personally, they leave me cold. I prefer trees.
Sue Townsend
#84. General de Gaulle is again pictured in our newspapers, looking as usual like an embattled codfish.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#87. Laura was not in any way religious. She was not even religious enough to speculate towards irreligion.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#88. I wish I could write librettos for the rest of my life. It is the purest of human pleasures, a heavenly hermaphroditism of being both writer and musician. No wonder that selfish beast Wagner kept it all to himself.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#89. For the last six weeks I have found myself pestered by some characters in search of an author ...
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#90. In my talks with Coach Fran, I did tell him, "Fran, the worst thing you can do is take the job and then leave in two years, if we go on probation." He told me I had nothing to worry about, that he would be in it for the long haul.
Mal Moore With Steve Townsend
#92. Is what I'm doing or about to do getting us closer to our objective?
Robert Townsend
#93. I take life very seriously. I can laugh at it, because what else can you do? But it's a hard daily battle.
Sue Townsend
#95. I have a problem. I am an intellectual, but at the same time I am not very clever.
Sue Townsend
#97. Actors want to be told what to do - they really do. But they also want to have an input and be recognized for that.
Stuart Townsend
#98. Referees need help. Players are getting faster and fitter and too many referees are making decisions from behind the play. They see a tangle of legs, they are asked to make a decision with one, often obscured look at high speed.
Andy Townsend
#99. It was not I who was teaching my cat to gather rosebuds, but she who was teaching me.
Irving Townsend
