Rose Macaulay

The ascendancy over men's minds of the ruins of the stupendous past, the past of history, legend and myth, at once factual and fantastic, stretching back and back into ages that can but be surmised, is half-mystical in basis. The intoxication, at once so heady and so devout, is not the romantic melancholy engendered by broken towers and mouldered stones; it is the soaring of the imagination into the high empyrean where huge episodes are tangled with myths and dreams; it is the stunning impact of world history on its amazed heirs.

Life is one long struggle to disinter oneself to keep one's head above the accumulations the ever deepening layers of objects ... which attempt to cover one over steadily almost irresistibly like falling snow.

Women have one great advantage over men. It is commonly thought that if they marry they have done enough and need career no further. If a man marries on the other hand public opinion is all against him if he takes this view.

Nothing perhaps is strange once you have accepted life itself the great strange business which includes all lesser strangeness.

So they left the subject and played croquet, which is a very good game for people who are annoyed with one another, giving many opportunities for venting rancor.

We may say that all ages are dangerous to all people, in this dangerous life we live. But the thirties are a specially dangerous time for women. They have outlived the shyness and restraints of girlhood, and not attained to the caution and discretion of middle age. They are reckless, and consciously or unconsciously on the lookout for adventure. They see ahead of them the end of youth, and that quickens their pace.