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81 " But then, what is belief? A thought lodges in the mind, will not out, preserves its freshness and colour and flexibility like the corpse of a saint: is this belief, or is it heresy? "
― Sylvia Townsend Warner , The Corner That Held Them
82 " But the prioress continued to express pleasure in Dame Alice’s common sense, candour, and lack of imagination, so Dame Alice continued to manifest common sense and lack of imagination. "
83 " Dame Helen agreed that cleverness was not everything. Many saints were simple enough. The prioress remarked that it was not till christian times that simplicity became a virtue; the good characters of the Old Testament were ingenious as well as virtuous. ‘That was because they were Jews,’ said Dame Beatrix. "
84 " But we cannot all be saints. Some of us have to be stewards. "
85 " Dame Alice was suffering from nothing more than an indigestion of self-importance. "
86 " The pother about the Visitation had no more relevance to the bishop’s coming than the smell of hot women that was constantly in her nostrils had anything to do with the sun’s journey overhead. "
87 " When a dog has slept in the same corner for so many years no one is likely to enquire into its pedigree. "
88 " For each one of us lives in his microcosm, the solidity of this world is a mere game of mirrors, there can be no absolute existence for what is apprehended differently by all. "
89 " Even Henry and Caroline, whom she saw every day, were half hidden under their accumulations--accumulations of prosperity, authority, daily experience. They were carpeted with experience. No new event could set jarring feet on them but they would absorb and muffle the impact. If the boiler burst, if a policeman climbed in at the window waving a sword, Henry and Caroline would bring the situation to heel by their massive experience of normal boilers and normal policemen. "
― Sylvia Townsend Warner