17+ Mary Butts Quotes (Modernist, Surrealist And Experimental)

Mary Butts was a British writer active in the early 20th century. She is best known for her modernist fiction, which often explored the occult and paganism. Her works include Ashe of Rings (1925), Speed the Plough (1926), and The Crystal Cabinet (1929).

Build a little fence of trust around today; Fill the space with loving deeds, and therein stay. — Mary Butts

If it is true that it is the simplicity of the Einsteinian formulae which constitutes their difficulty, that they are so obvious as to escape notice, it seems to me that this applies to events in life, numberless happenings, perhaps the basic ones, which we, saturated in detail and hurrying through subdivisions, lose sight of. — Mary Butts

The truth which may not be told, is the truth which cannot be told. — Mary Butts

Nature has a counterpart, a representation of every interior mood and obscure perception of man. — Mary Butts

Sink twice before you strike out for land. — Mary Butts

Armed with madness, I go on a long voyage. — Mary Butts

I blessed the power which has filled my life with poetry. — Mary Butts

Frog or pearl, life hid something at the bottom of the cup. — Mary Butts

I am old enough to remember what it was like when the theories of Freud first escaped from the study and the clinic, and the great game of Hunt-the Complex began, to the entertainment and alarm of a war-shattered and disillusioned world. — Mary Butts

It is in the nature of any effort to leave something serviceable behind it. — Mary Butts

I cannot remember a time when I was not enraptured or tortured by words. Always there have been words which, sometimes for their sound alone, sometimes for their sound and sense, I would not use. From a loathing of their grossness or sickliness, their weight or want of weight. Their inexactitude, their feeling of acidity or insipidity. Their action, not only on the intelligence but on the nerves, was instant. — Mary Butts

One should be allowed to choose one's burden. — Mary Butts

Art is the god you have not seen. — Mary Butts

I thought of my father's wisdom, as though it were buried in a box under a tree. As in the old song - a gold box with a silver pin. Some day I should be grown up, and I should dig up the box and turn the pin. — Mary Butts

For watching death, and above all, after death; not death in battle, but death after battle, brings one to certain indifferences that are also a form of death. — Mary Butts

Not till the end of the war will there be any time for art or love or magic again. Perhaps never again. — Mary Butts

There are two kinds of reading, reading which is contemplation - even a kind of vision & reading for information. For the first only the best will do, for the rest - then one can let in anything one would like to read in the world. — Mary Butts

Life Lessons by Mary Butts

1. Mary Butts' work emphasizes the importance of questioning the status quo and fighting against oppressive systems. She often uses surrealism and symbolism to explore themes of gender, sexuality, and class.
2. Her writing also encourages readers to think critically and to challenge the power structures that exist in society.
3. Through her work, Butts reminds us that we can make a difference in the world and that we should never give up in the face of adversity.