Quotes from Elizabeth von Arnim

Crumpling up the paper object which some of the visitors called a serviette, and some a tablenapkin, the ones who called it a tablenapkin being much shocked at the ones who called it a serviette, and the ones who called it a serviette not even being aware that they thereby placed themselves irrevocably beyond the pale.

It's very awkward when you aren't so old inside as you are outside. For years I've been trying to be dignified, and I'm always being tripped up by a kind of apparently incurable natural effervescence.

Beginnings were not suitable, she felt, after a certain age, especially not for women. Mothers of the married, such as herself and Mrs. Cumfrit, should be concerned rather with endings than beginnings.

Mrs. Colquhoun was being amiable because she thought Catherine was down and out, and Mrs. Colquhoun was what she was, hard, severe, critical, grudging of happiness, kind to failure so long as it remained failure, simply because there wasn't a soul in the whole world who really loved her. A devoted husband would have done much to bring out her original goodness; a very devoted husband would have done everything.

Who can begin conventional amiability the first thing in the morning? It is the hour of savage instincts and natural tendencies; it is the triumph of the Disagreeable and the Cross. I am convinced that the Muses and the Graces never thought of having breakfast anywhere but in bed.

September 15th. After that I opened my heart to him, and listened reverently to all he had to say, and treasured up his kind and encouraging advice, and wished he could stay here a whole year and help me through the seasons. But he went, as people one likes always do go, and he was the only guest I have had whose departure made me sorry.

And when he saw the letter, her first letter, the first bit of her handwriting, by his plate at breakfast, he seized it so quickly and turned so red that Lewes was painfully clear as to who had written it. Poor Chris. Cumfrit. Clutches….

Outward calm prevailed in the room, subdued voices, the tranquillity of fancy-work, and the peace of albums; yet Anna could not avoid a chilled impression, a feeling as though each person present were distrustful of the others, and more or less on the defensive.

However, few marriages, he understood, were lasting successes, so that perhaps after all it didn't much matter.

Blood from your veins?" she repeated faintly. It sounded horrid. It offended her ears. It had nothing to do with the advertisement. The strange light in his eyes made her think of fanaticism, cruelty, and the Middle Ages. The mildest of men in general, as she found later on, rabidness seized him at the mere mention of Jews.

It is not graceful, and it makes one hot; but it is a blessed sort of work, and if Eve had had a spade in Paradise and known what to do with it, we should not have had all that sad business of the apple.

I came away quite joyfully, and with many a loving thought of my own dear ragged garden, and all the corners in it where the anemones twinkle in the spring like stars, and where there is so much nature and so little art.

the teeming plant life rejoices on the lawns free from all interference from men and hoes;

No, but one might mend — —" Anna stopped, feeling that under some circumstances even the mending of drains might be impious. She had heard so much about piety and Providence within the last two hours that she was confused, and was no longer clear as to the exact limit of conduct beyond which a flying in the face of Providence might be said to begin.

Pincher took me to London, and Knobbie brought me away. It looked as if I were beginning to be led about by dogs. My

Quite unnecessary, either, ever to say pfui to him, for he was a most virtuous dog, protected from sin by absence of desires. What a contrast to his impassioned predecessor!

Oh, delight, delight to think one didn't die this time, that one isn't going to die this time after all, but is going to get better, going to live, going presently to be quite well again and able to go back to one's friends, to the people who still love one....

always so firmly supposed she did; and it was why

Thus does good fortune follow on the steps of the reckless. If

it was difficult to exercise him properly, because he was so big that even if I ran—and I was for ever running, in my zeal for his welfare,—he still, to keep up with me, needed only to walk, and if I paused for any reason, such as getting my breath or having to tie my shoelace, instantly he lay down. The

I would have all couples neatly paired in years, the forties with the forties, and the twenties with the twenties. Should the forties, as sometimes happens, not care about other forties, and wish to frequent twenties, in their own interests they should be discouraged, and equally those twenties should be discouraged who, with the inexperience of their age, suppose they could be lastingly happy with forties. Fortunately

And while I ate muffins—things I had never been able even to look at in London, but now swallowed with complacence,—and Pincher sat in front of me watching every mouthful, just as though he hadn't had an enormous dinner a few minutes before, and the cat, finished with Knobbie's ears, deftly turned her over and began tidying her stomach, I did feel that my feet were set once more in the path of peace, and that all I had to do was to continue steadily along it.

A train was nearly due, and intending passengers were sitting in front of the hotels drinking beer while they waited, and various conveyances had stopped there on their way to Göhren or Sellin, and the Lonely One seemed a very noisy, busy one to me as we rattled by over the stones, and I was glad to turn off to the left at a sign-post pointing towards Göhren and get on to the deep, sandy, silent forest roads. The forest

I certainly prefer buying new rose-trees to new dresses, if I cannot comfortably have both; and I see a time coming when the passion for my garden will have taken such a hold on me that I shall not only entirely cease buying more clothes, but begin to sell those that I already have.