Quotes from Dodie Smith

They'd be all right if it was midsummer," said Rose, when we tried them on. "But in April —— !" Still, we decided to wear them if the fine weather held. And when we woke up yesterday it was more like June than April. Oh, it was the most glorious morning! I suppose the best kind of spring morning is the best weather God has to offer. It certainly helps one to believe in Him.

extreme happiness invites religion almost as much as extreme misery.

Well, for inexperienced pray-ers it sometimes is. You see, they're apt to think of God as a slot-machine. If nothing comes out they say 'I knew dashed well it was empty' — when the whole secret of prayer is knowing the machine's full." "But how can one know?" "By filling it oneself." "With faith?" "With faith.

so dimly, so gradually, as I wandered along, that only when my home at last lay before me did I cry: 'Now I know why I have been happy!' How words weave spells! As I wrote of the avenue, it rose before my eyes – I can see it now, lined with great smooth-trunked trees whose branches meet far above me. The still air is flooded with peace, yet somehow expectant – as it seemed to me once when I was in King's Crypt cathedral

But there is something I want to capture. It has to do with the feeling I had when I watched the Cottons coming down the lane, the queer separate feeling. I like seeing people when they can't see me. I have often looked at our family through lighted windows and they seem quite different, a bit the way rooms seen in looking-glasses do. I can't get the feeling into words — it slipped away when I tried to capture it.

Perhaps it would really be rather dull to be married and settled for life. Liar! It would be heaven.

Our Clare doesn't much care for real life,' Drew told Jane. 'What she needs is to live in a book– the kind that no longer gets written.

I feel quite unreasonably happy this minute, watching them both; knowing I can go and join them in the warmth, yet staying here in the cold.

I think it worthy of note that I never felt happier in my life - despite sorrow for Father, pity for Rose, embarrassment about Stephen's poetry and no justification for hope as regards our family's general outlook. Perhaps it is because I have satisfied my creative urge; or it may be due to the thought of eggs for tea.

And then, as I watched the sheep peacefully nibbling the grass, it came to me that Hyde Park has never belonged to any London – that it has always been, in spirit, a stretch of the countryside; and that it thus links the Londons of all periods together most magically – by remaining for ever unchanged at the heart of the ever-changing town.

perhaps it is the loving that counts, not the being loved in return - that perhaps true loving can never know any thing but happiness.

What with books and chocolate, there's not much else you could have in it, is there?

Was he again -- I had never forgotten that overheard phrase of Eve's -- being kind to be cruel? I only knew I had been given back enough to live on. And dimly, dimly, I began to see a new Last Act to crown my play.

No, that was my privilege.

The caravans bark but the dogs move on.

I suppose the best kind of spring morning is the best weather God has to offer. It certainly helps one to believe in Him.

It's only the word God, you know--it makes such a conventional noise. It's only shorthand for where we come from, where we're going, and what it's all about. And do religious people find out what it's all about? Do they really get the answer to the riddle? They just get a whiff of an answer sometimes.

Neil is wearing a coat such as I never saw in my life before: checked back and front, but plain sleeves. Perhaps it was made out of two old coats – though I hope not, as that would show him to be poor and his brother mean. And it looked rather a noisily new coat. I expect it's just American.

ByÅ'o to fascynujÄ…ce, szczególnie sklepy z artykuÅ'ami papierniczymi - na nie mogÅ'abym patrze? bez koÅ"ca. Rose twierdzi, ?e to najnudniejsze sklepy na Å›wiecie, poza, by? mo?e, rze?nikiem. (Nie rozumiem, jak mo?na nazwa? sklepy rze?nicze nudnymi; sÄ… zbyt peÅ'ne okrucieÅ"stwa).

thirstily and gratefully. 'My pride as an innkeeper

A thousand pounds for clothes — when one thinks how long poor people could live on it! When one thinks how long we could live on it, for that matter! Oddly, I have never thought of us as poor people — I mean, I have never been terribly sorry for us, as for the unemployed or beggars; though really we have been rather worse off, being unemployable and with no one to beg from.

I do call it a sign of a beautiful nature if a girl who is in love and surrounded by all the splendour is lonely for her sister.

Contemplation seems to be the only luxury that costs nothing.

Just to be in love seemed the most blissful luxury I had ever known.