Quotes from Ronald Firbank

a tiara swamps her

On such a languid afternoon how hard it seemed to bear a cross! Pleasant to tilt it a little - lean it for an instant against somebody else.

At which vision, of continual middle age, the younger Miss Flowerman fainted.

One tooth missing. And only half roughed. on one side only. I'd not call her pretty.

In a gloomy corner, she's still quite pretty.

And the Dean smiled sheepishly and tried to look less like a wolf. It was a favorite expression of his when addressing youth.

An over-sensitive person in the country is always a strain.

You aroused his . . . that surely was very indiscreet.

In Ashringford, if souls are rare, we've at least some healthy spirits.

But I'm so tired, Winsome said, of Meeting other people. I want other people to meet me.

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

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

Although there were moments even still in the grey glint of morning when the room had the agitated, stricken appearance of a person who had changed his creed a thousand times, sighed, stretched himself, turned a complete somersault, sat up, smiled, lay down, turned up his toes and died of doubts. But this aspect was reserved exclusively for the housemaids and the translucent threads of dawn.

Must colour change?

I adore italics, don't you?

Boats with crimson spouts, to wit, steamers, dotted the skyline far away, and barques, with sails like the wings of butterflies, borne by an idle breeze, were bringing more than one ineligible young mariner back to the prose of shore.

After all," she inquired, "isn't heaven a sort of snobbism? A Looking-up, a preference for the best hotel?

Never in her life had she thought so much about him before. Twice in two minutes!

How could I ever have been happy with her," he had asked," when her favorite colour is crushed strawberry?

Shall we evoke Morocco with a rose and lilac shoe?

I fancy there's a new one: Notes on the Tedium of Places-comprising almost everywhere.

Holding ten cathedrals at arm's-length must have been terribly tiring.

I would read them my essay on Self-Control," Miss Hospice murmured, "if you thought it would have any effect." "It would probably make them infinitely worse. It might even kill them outright. And then it would be murder," Miss Valley said. Miss Hospice smiled sedately.

How vague these husbands are.