1
" Architecture without pain, art looked at in undiluted pleasure, enjoyment without anxiety, compunction, heartache: there is no beggar woman in the church door, no ragged child or sore animal in the square. The water is safe and the wallet is inside the pocket. There will be no missed plane connection. We are in a country where the curable ills are taken care of. We are in a country where the mechanics of living from transport to domestic heating (alack, poor Britain!) function imaginatively and well; where it goes without saying that the sick are looked after and secure and the young well educated and well trained; where ingenuity is used to heal delinquents and to mitigate at least the physical dependence of old age; where there is work for all and some individual seizure, and men and women have not been entirely alienated yet from their natural environment; where there is care for freedom and where the country as a whole has rounded the drive to power and prestige beyond its borders and where the will to peace is not eroded by doctrine, national self-love, and unmanageable fears; where people are kindly, honest, helpful, sane, reliable, resourceful, and cool-headed; where stranger–shyly–smiles to stranger. "Portrait Sketch of a Country: Denmark 1962 "
― Sybille Bedford , Pleasures and Landscapes
17
" To the young, so much is known and unknown. Before: the mystery, the blueprint, the half-imagined, half-refused. Once on the other side: the always-known, the click into place, acceptance; the unthought unthinkable turned fact, the plunge accomplished, the ship afloat. (Or: revulsion; recoil; regression.) For Flavia the shock – the double shock of recognition was in the heart (pleasure itself still eluded her that day), was a lightening, a light slight puff of happiness such as persists sometimes after awaking from a serene although forgotten dream. She told herself (the mind would not turn off) how cosy, how reassuring, how nice "
― Sybille Bedford , A Compass Error
