Quotes from Nancy Mitford

Polly's no company for him, really, you can see that, and in many ways she seems dreadfully on his nerves. She's so insular, you know, nothing is right for her, she hates the place, hates the people, even hates the climate. Boy at least is very cosmopolitan, speaks beautiful Italian, prepared to be interested in the local folk-lore and things like that, but you can't be interested quite alone and Polly is so discouraging. Everything seems rot to her and she only longs for England.

he liked picking Hector's brains on international subjects, or rather, allowing Hector's brains to flow over him in a glowing lava of thought.

Maurice Baring's

For three hours that day I forgot everything except my body and my pony's body; the rushing, the scrambling, the splashing, struggling up the hills, sliding down them again, the tugging, the bucketing, the earth and the sky. I forgot everything, I could hardly have told you my name. That must be the great hold that hunting has over people, especially stupid people; it enforces an absolute concentration, both mental and physical.

It is unfair' was a perpetual cry of the Radletts when young. The great advantage of living in a large family is that early lesson of life's essential unfairness.

But beauty is more, after all, than bones, for, while bones belong to death and endure after decay, beauty is a living thing.

And I might offer you a little advice, Fanny, it would be to read fewer books, dear, and make your house slightly more comfortable. That is what a man appreciates in the long run.

There's only a yard of stuff in it, worth a pound if that, I went on, horrified by the waste of money. And how many yards of canvas in a Fragonard? And how much do planks of wood cost, or the skin of a darling goat before some clever person turns them into commodes and morocco? Art is more than yards, just as one is more than flesh and bones.

They were respected by their neighbours for their conformity to the fashion of the day, for their morals, for their wealth, and for their excellence at all kinds of sport.

Adorable as she was, Northey was by no means an easy proposition. She was now in love, for the first time (or so she said, but is it not always the first time, and for that matter, the last?) and complained about it with the squeaks and yelps of a thwarted puppy.

I rather dread doctors at one's age, it always seems to me they take one look at you, cry cancer & remove several important portions of your anatomy. (p89)

No thanks, darling,' said Héloïse. 'I'm not old enough to marry yet. But when I am grown up I'm going to be either a duchess like Mummy or a tart like Amabelle. Nothing in between for me. Only,' she added jauntily, 'there are rather few eligible dukes about so it almost looks as though –

They spoke as though these Princes are so remote from life as we know it that the smallest sign of humanity, the mere fact even that they communicated by means of speech, was worth noting and proclaiming.

She replied, "When you find a bike1 in a birk,2 busk3 there the bauk4.

People have no memory about that sort of thing and, after all, there's nothing to forget except bad taste.

There they are, held like flies in the amber of that moment -- click goes the camera and on goes life, the minutes, the days, the years, the decades, taking them further and further from that happiness and promise of youth . . ..

It's a funny thing that people are always quite ready to admit if they've no talent for drawing or music, whereas everyone imagines that they themselves are capable of true love, which is a talent like any other, only far more rare.

That was where [Lady Montdore's] charm lay. She would suddenly be nice just when it seemed that she was about to go for you tooth and nail, it was the charm of a purring puma.

Have the Sauveterres not arrived yet, Sonia?' said Lord Montdore coming up for another cup of tea. There was a movement among the women. They turned their heads like dogs who think they hear somebody unwrapping a piece of chocolate.

The young man she had fallen in love with, handsome, gay, intellectual, and domineering, melted away upon closer acquaintance, and proved to have been a chimera, never to have existed outside her imagination. Linda did not commit the usual fault of blaming Tony for what was entirely her own mistake, she merely turned from him in absolute indifference. This was made easier by the fact that she saw so little of him.

I don't quite know why, but I felt somehow that Linda had been once more deceived in her emotions, that this explorer in the sandy waste had seen only another mirage. The lake was there, the trees were there, the thirsty camels had gone down to have their evening drink; alas, a few steps forward would reveal nothing but dust and desert as before.

Madame de Pompadour excelled at an art which the majority of human beings thoroughly despise because it is unprofitable and ephemeral: the art of living. Change is the greatest aphrodisiac of all.

He thought of the lonely evening ahead of him and wondered whether he should telephone to some of his friends, but decided that it would be of little use. They would all be doing things by now. He also thought of the wonderful energy of other people, of how they not only had the energy to do things all day but also to make arrangements and plans for these things which they did. It as as much as he could manage to do the things, he knew that he would never be able to make the plans as well.

If somebody could write a book for people who never read they would make a fortune