Quotes from Georgette Heyer

Why, her father would turn in his grave--well, as a matter of fact, he was cremated, but what I mean is, if he hadn't been he would have. [Ermyntrude]

She thought, in touching innocence, that in Miles Calverleigh she had found a friend, and a better one by far than any other, because his mind moved swiftly, because he could make her laugh even when she was out of charity with him, and because of a dozen other attributes which were quite frivolous – hardly attributes at all, in fact – but which added up to a charming total, outweighing the more important faults in his character.

He would not object, he said, to accepting a post as a librarian. But as Cecilia was unable to imagine that her father or her brother would feel any marked degree of satisfaction in giving her in marriage to a librarian, this very handsome concession on Mr Fawnhope's part merely added to her despondency.

If someone would have the goodness to inform me whether I am assisting at a tragedy or a farce I should be grateful

I see you will have it, Mr. Jettan. I will meet you when and where you will. Philip patted his sword-hilt. I have noticed, Mr. Bancroft, that you habitually don your sword. So I took the precaution of wearing mine. 'When' is now, and 'where' is yonder! He pointed above the hedge that encircled the garden to the copse beyond. It was a very fine theatrical effect, and he was pleased with it.

Lord, if we were all to marry our first loves what a plague of ill-assorted marriages there would be!

there was something very taking in her face which owed nothing to the excellence of her features: an expression of sweetness, a sparkle of irrepressible fun, an unusually open look, quite devoid of self-consciousness.

I am not in a heat at all,' Léonie said with great precision. 'I am of a coolness quite remarkable, and I would like to kill that woman.

The landlord was trying to explain that there were a great many English people in his house, all fighting duels or having hysterics.

Eugenia never wears modish gowns. She says there are more important things to think of than one's dresses.' 'What a stupid thing to say!' remarked Sophy. 'Naturally there are, but not, I hold, when one is dressing for dinner.

From being a female sunk below reproach Sophy became rapidly an unconventional girl whose unaffected manners were refreshing in an age of simpers and high flights.

You have no knowledge of me. You are to be pitied.' 'Envied, more like,' said his undutiful son.

If you had not done such a shabby thing to me I would not have had you kidnapped.

I know it, and I wanted so much not to drag you into it!' said Kitty remorsefully. 'I thought, if only you knew nothing about it, it would serve as a reason for you to put an end to our engagement!' 'Yes, I know you did. Told me so, in that letter you wrote me. Dashed cork-brained notion! Stands to reason if you're in it I must be too.

But it was only in epic tragedies that gloom was unrelieved. In real life tragedy and comedy were so intermingled that when one was most wretched ridiculous things happened to make one laugh in spite of oneself

To start with, I know that the General didn't get on with his son, but seemed to prefer his nephew; I know that he disapproved violently of Miss de Silva, and behaved towards her with unparalleled cruelty. How much? interrupted Dinah. Harding replied with perfect gravity: No absinthe, no shower in her bathroom... Did she tell you all that? said Dinah. Don't you think she's rather good value? Yes, but she wastes my time.

Cecilia could have told him that Mr. Fawnhope's intrepidity sprang more from a sublime unconsciousness of the risk of infection than from any deliberate heroism; but since she was not in the habit of discussing her lover with her brother he continued in a happy state of ignorance, himself too practical a man to comprehend the density of the veil in which a poet could wrap himself.

One or two of the villagers have seen it, too, though not as clearly as he did. Old Buttermere said it was a white thing, that glided over the ground, and vanished into the shrubbery.' 'And a very good place for it to vanish, too,' said Hugo, wholly unimpressed. 'Give me a sheet, and a night without too much moonlight, and I'll engage to do the same!

Glamour might still have clung to a rakehell who abducted noble damsels, but no glamour remained about a man who had been pushed into a pond in full ball-dress.

He didn't choose between me and you, Julia: it was between me and ruin.

If,said the Dowager, after a pregnant silence, I had ever dared to speak so to my grandmother, I should have been soundly whipped and confined to my bedchamber on bread-and-water for a sennight! The gravity vanished from Cressy's face. no, would you, Ma'am? How very brave your parents must have been!

It was like a bad dream, in which people one knew quite well behaved fantastically, and one was powerless to escape from some dreadful doom.

It was seldom that Mr Standen, a peace-loving young gentleman, was conscious of a wish to come to blows with his fellow-men, but a wistful desire to land his cousin a facer did for an instant flicker in his mind.

The end of the idyll was implicit in the beginning: I at least knew that, though you might not. And also that the more enchanted the idyll the greater must be the pain of its ending. That won't endure. Hearts don't really break, you know.