Quotes from Elizabeth von Arnim

Mrs. Mitcham had seen more love about in the flat than she could remember during the whole of poor Mr. Cumfrit's time in it. She couldn't help wondering what that poor gentleman would say if he could see what was happening in his flat. He wouldn't much like it, she was afraid; but perhaps hardly anybody who was dead would much like what they would see, supposing they were able to come back and look.

I see no use in thinking of painful past things. They ought always to be forgotten as quickly as possible; if they are not, they have a trick of turning the present sour, and I cling to the present, to the one thing one really has, and like to make it as cheerful as possible—like to get, by industrious squeezing, every drop of honey out of it. Just now I cannot tell you how thankful I am simply to be alive with nothing in my body hurting.

There is no help, except what you dig out of your own self; and if I could make you see that I would have shown you all the secrets of life.

We build the most outrageous castles in the air. Nothing is certain, and everything is possible.

All I want is to read quietly the books that I at present prefer.

This embroidery has cost at least two marks the meter," she said to herself, fingering it. "She must roll in money. And the wall-paper — how unpractical! It is so light that every mark will be seen. The flies alone will ruin it in a month." She shrugged her shoulders, and smiled; strange to say, the thought of Anna's paper being spoiled pleased her.

It seemed, however, that I had. I didn't want any more, so I got them. And now I am glad, for if, as I had sometimes wished at that time, I could have finished with a consciousness become unbearable, if, in other words, I had then died, I would never have known a great many very beautiful and delightful things. Evidently, then, it is wise not too soon to lose patience with life, but to wait and see what it may have round its next corner. I

We are neither of us wise, but it is surprising how talking to a friend, even to a friend as unwise as yourself, clears up your brains and lets in new light.

Experience has taught me that whenever anything is on the tip of my tongue the best thing to do is to keep it there.

Love—that was what a man wanted; needed; simply had to have. Kind love. Sweet, smiling, gracious love. In one's house like sunshine, filling it with light; in one's garden like roses, filling it with fragrance. Ah, how he could imagine it! How well he could imagine it, the sort of heaven there would be about a man all day—and all night too, if, by the blessing of God, one happened to have married Love.

The less a person knows, the more certain he is that he is right, and ... no weapons yet invented are of any use in a struggle with stupidity.

No lady she had had to do with had ever had such a thing on her dressing-table. Powder was different, because one needed powder sometimes for other things besides one's face, and also one powdered babies, and they, poor lambs, couldn't be suspected of wanting to appear different from what God had made them. But a lip-stick! Red stuff. What actresses put on, and those who were no better than they should be. Her mistress and a lip-stick—what would Miss Virginia say?

It makes one so healthy to live in a garden, so healthy in mind as well as body.

For a great calm was now upon her, a delicious feeling of being new—as new and untouched as the fresh young morning itself. Sleep had held her in its arms, and smoothed out all yesterday's furrows. The night was gone, and out of its blackness had come this golden flower of day, with leaves rustling in the sun....

and there is no getting away from it, I am made for dogs and dogs for me, because the instant I saw him I began to cheer up. Sitting

remembered how I was only a speck after all in uncomfortably limitless space, of no account whatever in the general scheme of things, but with a horrid private capacity for being often and easily hurt; and how specks have a trick of dying, which I in my turn would presently do, and a fresh speck, not nearly so nice, as I hoped and believed, would immediately start up and fill my vacancy, perhaps so exactly my vacancy that it would even wear my gloves and stockings.

Really I have been thankful on my knees every time I have not said what I was going to say when I've been annoyed.

It was all quite easy and simple. No need to hustle, as she had been doing till dinner. An immense leisure was now to be hers for ever, and it was entirely her own silly fault if she upset it by rushing at things.

What Susie cannot grasp is that for Anna, to achieve her independence from living off Susie's money through marrying a rich man, she is merely exchanging one form of enslavement for another and all within a social set that bores Anna to distraction.

What's the use of worrying? ...and settled down to enjoy staying where she was. Much better enjoy what you had got, when by chance you had got it, instead of wasting time worrying because you ought really to be somewhere else.

She pushed yesterday, and everything in it, out of her mind, addressing herself, as the sensible should, wholly to the actual moment.

When Michael Frere came to see Elizabeth about her autobiography All the Dogs of My Life she found him 'such a boring little man. But it is because we are all growing old, and the bones of our inadequate minds come through the flesh that hid them.' She hadn't always found him boring, and Love, one of her best novels, is largely based on their romance.

It makes one very humble to see oneself surrounded by such a wealth of beauty and perfection anonymously lavished, and to think of the infinite meanness of our own grudging charities, and how displeased we are if they are not promptly and properly appreciated. I do sincerely trust that the benediction that is always awaiting me in my garden may by degrees be more deserved, and that I may grow in grace, and patience, and cheerfulness, just like the happy flowers I so much love.

1922 was a bad year for Elizabeth. She was disappointed by some of the reviews of The Enchanted April although it was to prove the most popular — excepting the first — of all her novels. She suffered from depressions that she couldn't throw off. Her doctor diagnosed menopausal symptoms.