Quotes from Ronald Firbank

I remember the average curate at home as something between a eunuch and a snigger.

To be sympathetic without discrimination is so very debilitating.

She made a ravishing corpse.

The world is so dreadfully managed, one hardly knows to whom to complain.

To add a dash of picturesqueness to her career, her husband, it was said, was doing his utmost to get rid of her; and although she had been in an aeroplane disaster, a fatal gala performance, two railway accidents, and a shipwreck, she always came back - smiling.

Oh, she's getting sinister and passee. Perhaps; but only sometimes!

To conceal her misgivings, she waved a sultry yellow fan. There was a forest painted upon it of Arden, in indigo, in violet, in sapphire, in turquoise, and in common blue. The fan, by Conder, was known perversely as The Pink Woods.

But if they had meant to murder me, the camel-lady was mysteriously murmuring to Monsignor Parr, they would not have put chocolate in the luncheon-basket; my courage returned to me at that!

The effort of having to look more or less like one's photographs is becoming such a strain.

Something between a butterfly and a misanthrope, he was temperamental, when not otherwise...employed.

She was too preoccupied about appearing young, I suppose, to care about anything else, her own part included.

She's full of trivial sadness

I'm glad I can still sometimes drug my senses with a book.

It makes one's hand look so bourgeoise.

The danger of Italy...is, it tends to make one florid.

Poor man, in the end, he became so decorative that he died!

I assure you it made me feel quite quaint and queer.

And it gets so gloomy and so monotonous. Probably the casino---

Never lend your name, or your money, or your books or your umbrella, or anything, to anybody - if you're wise.

Those complicated curls of hers remind me of the codicils to my poor dear Leslie's will.

Lady Barrow lolled languidly in her mouse-eaten library, a volume of mediaeval Tortures (with plates) propped up against her knee. In fancy, her husband was pinned down and imploring for mercy at Figure 3.

But after a career of dissipation she seems delighted to settle down.

Lady Anne fetched a sigh.

What could be more tiresome than a wife that bleats?